I started reading the big histories and the small histories, the memoirs and so forth. At some point, I found the diary of William E. Dodd.

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.

I don't listen to music when I write, but I do turn on appropriate music when I read portions of my manuscripts back to myself - kind of like adding a soundtrack to help shape mood.

I was never concretely aware of the extent of anti-Semitism in the United States and in the upper levels of the State Department.

Beneath the gore and smoke and loam, this book is about the evanescence of life, and why some men choose to fill their brief allotment of time engaging the impossible, others in the manufacture of sorrow. In the end it is a story of the ineluctable conflict between good and evil, daylight and darkness, the White City and the Black.

His weakness was his belief that evil had boundaries.

Hitler was such an anomalous character - he was so over-the-top chaotic in his approach to statesmanship, his manner and in the violence which overwhelmed the country initially. I think diplomats around the world... felt like something like that simply would not be tolerated by the people of Germany.