Erik Larson Quotes

I'd always been interested in maritime history, especially the great liners. I'd have done a book about the Titanic if it hadn't already been done to death by James Cameron and Celine Dion.

I was absolutely obsessed with the Titanic - not the film, the actual boat. I'd draw diagrams about it and theorise that if it was built in a different way, it wouldn't have sunk.

I know a lot about the Titanic. My dad was a Titanic expert.

The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.

The Titanic will protect itself.

Historically, maritime travelers had to pass around the entire mass of North and South America, including the bottom tip, the tempestuous Cape Horn, which was littered with shipwrecks.

There's so much written about the Titanic, and it's hard to separate what's fact and what's fiction. My understanding is that the way the Titanic was designed, the emphasis was placed on surviving a head-on collision.

It's a funny thing, but today the Titanic is probably much more - that is people are much more aware of it than they were in 1954, when I was doing my research.

I love the story behind the Vasa Museum: in the 17th century, the Swedish king was trying to make a statement by building a huge ship that would sail around Europe carrying the Swedish flag and proving that we were a force to be reckoned with, and basically, the ship was top-heavy, and so it went 300 or so yards and sank.

My father was a welder on the second-highest sail, so the Opera House has a special place in my heart.

I've always read a lot of historical books and I'm a big fan of documentaries, and I've always thought of ways to do it.

The three most written-about subjects of all time are Jesus, the Civil War, and the Titanic.

Since the invention of steamships distant countries have become like those that are near at hand.

At sea a fellow comes out. Salt water is like wine, in that respect.

Denmark is a small nation of five million people, but our economy is completely dependent on our commercial fleet. Every family has some connection to it.

Not every story in history has a beginning, a middle and an end, but the wreck of the Titanic does. It begins when they leave, in the middle it hits an iceberg, and in the final two hours, the ship sinks.

I sailed a bit as a child, but it wasn't until I was around 40, when I was halfway through Patrick O'Brian's 'Master and Commander' novels, that I had the sudden epiphany that I had to go sail on a square-rig ship.

If you wish to avoid foreign collision, you had better abandon the ocean.

I love to read history books, which is where I get my ideas. I also read historical romance for pleasure.

So that between the Cape of St. Maria and Japan we were four months and twenty-two days; at which time there were no more than six besides myself that could stand upon his feet.

When I was 15, I came downstairs one morning, picked up mother's newspaper and, oh, what a shock! The Titanic had gone. The 'unsinkable' ship - but it had gone down so simple.

Who cares about the men who steered your breakfast cereal through winter storms? How ironic that the more ships have grown in size and consequence, the less space they take up in our imagination.

But very unfortunately the merchant marine died away till even the majority of fishing done about the Cape is in the hands of the Portuguese who emigrated to the Cape some fifty years ago.

There is credible evidence that a Chinese fleet went as far as the coast of Africa, in present-day Kenya. It was the largest maritime fleet in the world, under the command of Zheng He, a favorite of the emperor.

Those who first cross the Atlantic in a steam-boat will be entitled to a great portion of applause. In a few years we expect such trips will be common ... and bold will they be who first make a passage to Europe in a steam-boat.