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Life & Wisdom Quote by James Laughlin

"We see them when they come to New York. They stay at my wife's apartment. We have quite a correspondence with them at all times. They play a very important role, the authors in the firm, because so much of the material we publish is suggested by them"

About this Quote

The line reads like a polite window into an ecosystem that was always more intimate - and more strategic - than the public myth of solitary genius. Laughlin, a poet who also functioned as publisher and patron through New Directions, frames writers as houseguests and pen pals before he frames them as suppliers. That order matters. He’s sketching a cultural economy where personal access is not a perk but infrastructure: New York as the hub, the wife’s apartment as the informal salon, “correspondence” as the bloodstream of a small but influential literary machine.

The subtext is managerial, almost disarmingly so. “They play a very important role, the authors in the firm” sounds like a quaint acknowledgment, but it quietly flips the power dynamic. Authors aren’t just talent being curated; they are also scouts and co-editors, feeding ideas upstream. Laughlin’s “suggested by them” hints at how editorial vision is often outsourced to the very people being published - not in a cynical way, but in recognition that modern literature travels through networks, not proclamations.

There’s also a soft pitch for legitimacy. By emphasizing constant contact and hospitality, Laughlin casts his operation as a community rather than a business. Yet the word “firm” punctures the romance: this is cultural production with balance sheets, schedules, and pipeline management. The genius of the passage is its calm admission that taste-making is collaborative, social, and domestic - built in living rooms as much as in manuscripts.

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APA Style (7th ed.)
Laughlin, James. (2026, January 15). We see them when they come to New York. They stay at my wife's apartment. We have quite a correspondence with them at all times. They play a very important role, the authors in the firm, because so much of the material we publish is suggested by them. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/we-see-them-when-they-come-to-new-york-they-stay-145768/

Chicago Style
Laughlin, James. "We see them when they come to New York. They stay at my wife's apartment. We have quite a correspondence with them at all times. They play a very important role, the authors in the firm, because so much of the material we publish is suggested by them." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/we-see-them-when-they-come-to-new-york-they-stay-145768/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"We see them when they come to New York. They stay at my wife's apartment. We have quite a correspondence with them at all times. They play a very important role, the authors in the firm, because so much of the material we publish is suggested by them." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/we-see-them-when-they-come-to-new-york-they-stay-145768/. Accessed 29 Mar. 2026.

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About the Author

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James Laughlin (October 30, 1914 - November 12, 1997) was a Poet from USA.

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