 Lascaris was considered in many ways the gentle and urbane face with the prickly and difficult White.David Marr credits Lascaris with being the driving force who kept White to his literary labours, including the string of novels that won White the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1973.White referred to Lascaris as "the small Greek of immense moral strength who became the central mandala in my life's hitherto messy design".