Louis Auchincloss
Louis Auchincloss
Louis Stanton Auchincloss was an American lawyer, novelist, historian, and essayist. He is best known as a prolific novelist who parlayed his experiences into books exploring the experiences and psychology of American polite society and old money. His dry, ironic works of fiction continue the tradition of Henry James and Edith Wharton...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth27 September 1917
CityLawrence, NY
CountryUnited States of America
There's no real alternative to what there is.
Decent artists go through bad times but eventually they do get recognized. It's by no means a battle lost. Yet.
Maybe when I'm dead, I'll be forgiven, but I'm afraid I'll also be forgotten.
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.
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.
Today is not forever.
The only thing that keeps a man going is energy. And what is energy but liking life?
A common objection to inherited wealth is that it stifles the urge to work. I have not generally observed this to be true.
Great lovers have made great sacrifices.
I grew up in the 1920s and 1930s in a nouveau riche world, where money was spent wildly, and I'm still living in one!... The private schools are all jammed with long waiting lists; the clubs -- all the old clubs -- are jammed with long waiting lists today; the harbors are clogged with yachts; there has never been a more material society than the one we live in today.... Where is this 'vanished world' they talk about? I don't think the critics have looked out the window!
We were not as rich as the Rockefellers or Mellons, but we were rich enough to know how rich they were.
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.
A neurotic can perfectly well be a literary genius, but his greatest danger is always that he will not recognize when he is dull.
Keep doing good deeds long enough, and you'll probably turn out a good man in spite of yourself.