"The intermittent depression that had shadowed him throughout his adult life was about to envelop him once again. "
— Erik Larson (The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America)

"alice in wonder land"
— Erik Larson (Lethal Passage: The Story of a Gun)

"I must confess a shameful secret: I love Chicago best in the cold."
— Erik Larson

"Snow fell. Carolers moved among the mansions of Prairie Avenue, pausing now and then to enter the fine houses for hot mulled cider and cocoa. The air was scented with woodsmoke and roasting duck. In Graceland Cemetery, to the north, young couples raced their sleighs over the snow-heaped undulations, pulling their blankets especially tight as they passed the dark and dour tombs of Chicago’s richest and most powerful men, the tombs’ bleakness made all the more profound by their juxtaposition against the night-blued snow […]
Outside the snow muffled the concussion of passing horses. Trains bearing fangs of ice tore through the crossing at Wallace."
— Erik Larson (The Devil in the White City)

"I find it all infinitely sad, but at the same time so entrancing, that I often feel as if it would be the part of wisdom to fly at once to the woods or mountains where one can always find peace. - Dora Root in a letter to Daniel Burnham"
— Erik Larson (The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America)

"It was so easy to disappear, so easy to deny knowledge, so very easy in the smoke and din to mask that something dark had taken root. This was Chicago, on the eve of the greatest fair in history."
— Erik Larson (The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America)