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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

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Louis Auchincloss
Age: 92 †
Born: 1917
Born: September 27
Died: 2010
Died: January 26
Historian
Lawyer
Novelist
Poet Lawyer
Lawrence
Nassau County
New York
Louis S. Auchincloss
Louis Stanton Auchincloss
Andrew Lee
Change
Actual
Character
Pick
Needs
Picks
Mind
Complete
Additional
Way
Track
Tracks
People
Sex
Traits
Often
Cover
Comes
Rare

More quotes by Louis Auchincloss

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Your literary style reflects your personality.
Louis Auchincloss
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Novels must have verisimilitude, and truth has little enough of that.
Louis Auchincloss
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Not the least of the hardships to which the dying are subject is the visitation of their loved ones. The poor darlings, God bless them, may feel every impulse to condole and console, but their primary sensation is nonetheless one of embarrassment in the presence of the unspeakable and a guilty gratitude that it is not yet their fate.
Louis Auchincloss
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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
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Decent artists go through bad times but eventually they do get recognized. It's by no means a battle lost. Yet.
Louis Auchincloss
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There is a charm, even for homely things, in perfect maintenance.
Louis Auchincloss
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Society matters not so much. Words are everything.
Louis Auchincloss
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I couldn't bear to see a chapter of the gospel turned into a chapter of Trollope.
Louis Auchincloss
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There's no real alternative to what there is.
Louis Auchincloss
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Great lovers have made great sacrifices.
Louis Auchincloss
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A man can spend his whole existence never learning the simple lesson that he has only one life and that if he fails to do what he wants with it, nobody else really cares.
Louis Auchincloss
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A lot of writers ... sit in a log cabin by the lake and put their feet up by the fire in the silence and write. If you can have that that's all very well, but the true writer will learn to write anywhere -- even in prison.
Louis Auchincloss
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Today is not forever.
Louis Auchincloss
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We were not as rich as the Rockefellers or Mellons, but we were rich enough to know how rich they were.
Louis Auchincloss
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Buechner is a worthy member of the great prose stylists: Pascal, Newman, and Merton, who have harnessed their art to a passionate religious faith.
Louis Auchincloss
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Only little boys and old men sneer at love.
Louis Auchincloss
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Keep doing good deeds long enough, and you'll probably turn out a good man in spite of yourself.
Louis Auchincloss
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I don't give a damn what people think.
Louis Auchincloss
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It seems to me that the arts are rather flourishing. There's an awful lot of bad art about because of this, but that's true of every great era. I'm sure there was a lot dreadful art in the Renaissance that we fortunately don't see today.
Louis Auchincloss