American novelist (1917-2010)
There's no real alternative to what there is.
LOUIS AUCHINCLOSS
interview, BOMB Magazine, fall 1997
You don't know the things in your childhood that influence you. You can't possibly know them. People today try to analyze the early environment and the reasons for something that happened, but if you look at children of the same family -- children who have identical parents, go to identical schools, have an almost identical upbringing, and yet who have totally different experiences and neuroses -- you realize that what influences the children is not so much the obvious externals as their emotional experiences. Of course any psychiatrist knows that.
LOUIS AUCHINCLOSS
The Atlantic, Oct. 15, 1997
Consider, children ... the pain of touching the tip of your finger to your mother's stove, even for a fraction of a second. That is an experience which most of you have suffered. Now try to imagine that pain, not simply on a fingertip but spread over the whole surface of your body, and not for a mere second, but everlastingly. That, children, is hellfire.
LOUIS AUCHINCLOSS
The Rector of Justin
Decent artists go through bad times but eventually they do get recognized. It's by no means a battle lost. Yet.
LOUIS AUCHINCLOSS
Atlantic Online, Oct. 15, 1997
The only thing that keeps a man going is energy. And what is energy but liking life?
LOUIS AUCHINCLOSS
A World of Profit
A common objection to inherited wealth is that it stifles the urge to work. I have not generally observed this to be true.
LOUIS AUCHINCLOSS
A Voice from Old New York
It's very rare that a character comes to mind complete in himself. He needs additional traits that I often pick from actual people. One way you can cover your tracks is to change the sex.
LOUIS AUCHINCLOSS
The Paris Review, fall 1994
The real and formidable influence of society was, fittingly, social. Those inside society's ranks controlled the private schools, the clubs, the country clubs, the subscription dances for the young, the Episcopal and Presbyterian churches, as well as the larger banks and law firms. It is commonly said that they have been relegated to the past. That is not so. They have simply lost their monopoly; they have had to move over and share their once closely guarded powers with the new rich, who are quite willing to spare the older generation so long as they are allowed to copy, and perhaps enhance, their style. See any Ralph Lauren ad.
LOUIS AUCHINCLOSS
A Voice from Old New York: A Memoir of My Youth
Society matters not so much. Words are everything.
LOUIS AUCHINCLOSS
A Voice from Old New York: A Memoir of My Youth
Keep doing good deeds long enough, and you'll probably turn out a good man in spite of yourself.
LOUIS AUCHINCLOSS
The Rector of Justin
To most readers the word 'fiction' is an utter fraud. They are entirely convinced that each character has an exact counterpart in real life and that any small discrepancy with that counterpart is a simple error on the author's part. Consequently, they are totally at a loss if anything essential is altered. Make Abraham Lincoln a dentist, put the Gettysburg Address on his tongue, and nobody will recognize it.
LOUIS AUCHINCLOSS
Life, Law, and Letters
We were not as rich as the Rockefellers or Mellons, but we were rich enough to know how rich they were.
LOUIS AUCHINCLOSS
The Book Class
I don't know enough about the lower classes to write about them. I don't feel with them, and that could be regarded as a defect, a limitation of my imagination. I could put myself in their position, but not politically. The idea of writing a story or a book about somebody completely devoid of appreciation of anything I care about is completely foreign to me.
LOUIS AUCHINCLOSS
interview, BOMB Magazine, fall 1997
I don't give a damn what people think.
LOUIS AUCHINCLOSS
interview, American Legends
If you can sense the corruption in me, it is ... because there's a dose of it in you.
LOUIS AUCHINCLOSS
The Rector of Justin
Like most children of affluence, I grew up with a distinct sense that my parents were only tolerably well off. This is because children always compare their families with wealthier ones, never with poorer. I thought I knew perfectly well what it meant to be rich in New York. If you were rich, you lived in a house with a pompous beaux-arts facade and kept a butler and gave children's parties with spun sugar on the ice cream and little cups of real silver as game prizes. If you were not rich you lived in a brownstone with Irish maids who never called you Master Louis and parents who hollered up and down the stairs instead of ringing bells.
LOUIS AUCHINCLOSS
A Writer's Capital
I used to go to church. I even went through a rather intense religious period when I was sixteen. But the idea of an everlasting life -- a never-ending banquet, as a stupid visiting minister to our church once appallingly described it -- filled me with a greater terror than the concept of extinction.
LOUIS AUCHINCLOSS
East Side Story
Great lovers have made great sacrifices.
LOUIS AUCHINCLOSS
The Rector of Justin
Once somebody's aware of a plot, it's like a bone sticking out. If it breaks through the skin, it's very ugly.
LOUIS AUCHINCLOSS
The Paris Review, fall 1994
I don't particularly care about having [my characters] talk realistically, that doesn't mean very much to me. Actually, a lot of people speak more articulately than some critics think, but before the 20th century it really didn't occur to many writers that their language had to be the language of everyday speech. When Wordsworth first considered that in poetry, it was considered very much of a shocker. And although I'm delighted to have things in ordinary speech, it's not what I'm trying to perform myself at all: I want my characters to get their ideas across, and I want them to be articulate.
LOUIS AUCHINCLOSS
interview, BOMB Magazine, fall 1997