Louis Auchincloss

The only thing that keeps a man going is energy. And what is energy but liking life?

— Louis Auchincloss

Perfection irritates as well as it attracts, in fiction as in life.

— Louis Auchincloss

“But Pierre had been born with a shrewdness that made him early aware that a failure to believe that human events were…

— Louis Auchincloss

I had always been considered such a nonentity where human relations were concerned that the idea that I might have an influence,…

— Louis Auchincloss

Your literary style reflects your personality.

— Louis Auchincloss

Buechner is a worthy member of the great prose stylists: Pascal, Newman, and Merton, who have harnessed their art to a passionate…

— Louis Auchincloss

There is a charm, even for homely things, in perfect maintenance.

— Louis Auchincloss

A lot of writers ... sit in a log cabin by the lake and put their feet up by the fire in…

— Louis Auchincloss

I used to go to church. I even went through a rather intense religious period when I was sixteen. But the idea…

— Louis Auchincloss

Today is not forever.

— Louis Auchincloss

It seems to me that the arts are rather flourishing. There's an awful lot of bad art about because of this, but…

— Louis Auchincloss

I don't particularly care about having [my characters] talk realistically, that doesn't mean very much to me. Actually, a lot of people…

— Louis Auchincloss

Decent artists go through bad times but eventually they do get recognized. It's by no means a battle lost. Yet.

— Louis Auchincloss

Novels must have verisimilitude, and truth has little enough of that.

— Louis Auchincloss

As the classes in modern life come together, we have become much more intensely class conscious. It's a very curious thing. But…

— Louis Auchincloss

“A man can spend his whole existence never learning the simple lesson that he has only one life and that if he…

— Louis Auchincloss

Maybe when I'm dead, I'll be forgiven, but I'm afraid I'll also be forgotten.

— Louis Auchincloss

With her high pale brow under her faded brown hair, she was like a rock washed clean by years of her husband's…

— Louis Auchincloss

I couldn't bear to see a chapter of the gospel turned into a chapter of Trollope.

— Louis Auchincloss

A neurotic can perfectly well be a literary genius, but his greatest danger is always that he will not recognize when he…

— Louis Auchincloss

You don't know the things in your childhood that influence you. You can't possibly know them. People today try to analyze the…

— Louis Auchincloss

Keep doing good deeds long enough, and you'll probably turn out a good man in spite of yourself.

— Louis Auchincloss

Not the least of the hardships to which the dying are subject is the visitation of their loved ones. The poor darlings,…

— Louis Auchincloss

A common objection to inherited wealth is that it stifles the urge to work. I have not generally observed this to be…

— Louis Auchincloss

To most readers the word 'fiction' is an utter fraud. They are entirely convinced that each character has an exact counterpart in…

— Louis Auchincloss