A Quote by Erik Larson

In hunting ideas for books, I look for stories about long-past events that once commanded the world's attention but that, for one reason or another, faded from contemporary awareness.

Erik Larson

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About Another Attention Awareness Books Contemporary Events Faded Hunting Ideas Long Look Once Past Past Events Reason Stories World

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Erik Larson
American - Author
Born: January 3, 1954

Most of my books are about contemporary subjects, and the world changes so fast that I'm lucky when events haven't overtaken the book I'm writing at the moment.

Nelson DeMille

There are more ideas on earth than intellectuals imagine. And these ideas are more active, stronger, more resistant, more passionate than "politicians" think. We have to be there at the birth of ideas, the bursting outward of their force: not in books expressing them, but in events manifesting this force, in struggles carried on around ideas, for or against them. Ideas do not rule the world. But it is because the world has ideas (and because it constantly produces them) that it is not passively ruled by those who are its leaders or those who would like to teach it, once and for all, what it must think.

Michel Foucault

I have been a soldier all my life. I have commanded companies, I have commanded regiments. I have commanded divisions. And I have commanded even more. But there are no fifteen thousand men i the world that can go across that ground.

James Longstreet

Commanded by God dozens of times in the Hebrew Bible to remember their past, Jews historically obeyed not by recording events but by ritually re-enacting them: by understanding the present through the lens of the past.

Dara Horn

London has the trick of making its past, its long indelible past, always a part of its present. And for that reason it will always have meaning for the future, because of all it can teach about disaster, survival, and redemption. It is all there in the streets. It is all there in the books.

Anna Quindlen

You said, 'I'm going to leave him because my love for you makes any other life a lie.' I've hidden these words in the lining of my coat. I take them out like a jewel thief when no-one's watching. They haven't faded. Nothing about you has faded. You are still the colour of my blood. You are my blood. When I look in the mirror it's not my own face I see. Your body is twice. Once you once me. Can I be sure which is which?

Jeanette Winterson

Because they're my stories, they're my version of events of the past three years. But I really hope people can hear their own stories within the songs and they can become our version of events.

Emeli Sande

I'm certainly very influenced by what you would call 'contemporary headline horror,' stuff that is true crime or for one reason or another catches our attention in the media, those strange cases that we end up obsessing about. I'm always influenced by weird anecdotes and news.

Dan Chaon

I write 'by the seat of my pants.' I love to do research. I am inspired by contemporary writers and contemporary events. I live in the real world.

Iris Johansen

Audiences forget facts, but they remember stories. Once you get past the jargon, the corporate world is an endless source of fascinating stories.

Ian P. Griffin

If you look at the best-seller list for American fiction, they're all sequels to detective stories or stories about hunting serial killers. That's what's called American fiction these days.

Albert Brooks

My first memory was of stories about the past - a past that, according to the storytellers, was superior in every way to the life then being lived. It didn't take me long, however, to understand that the present was all we had, for the past was gone, and nothing could be done about it.

Horton Foote

We live in a time of short attention spans and long stories. The short attention spans are seen as inevitable, the consequence of living our lives in thrall to flickering streams of information. The long stories are the surprise, as is the persistence of the audience for them.

Tom Junod

The past doesn’t exist except as a memory, a mental story, and though past events aren’t changeable, your stories about them are. You can act now to transform the way you tell the story of your past, ultimately making it a stalwart protector of your future.

Martha Beck

People need stories...we use stories to teach, to learn, to make sense of the world around us. As long as we need stories, we will need books.

Jennifer Chiaverini

'The UnAmericans' is a compassionate and brilliantly rendered debut - and for a book set largely in the past, these stories feel essential to understanding the contemporary world in which we live.

Jesmyn Ward

A Quote by Erik Larson

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