A man who chooses not to read is just as ignorant as a man who cannot read. — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
“Those who don't read good books have no advantage over those who can't.” — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read. — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand can turn out a good article on it — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense. — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
The difference between fiction and nonfiction is that fiction must be absolutely believable. — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
“The difference between nonfiction and fiction is that fiction must be absolutely believable.” — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
“There ain't anything that is so interesting to look at as a place that a book has talked about. -- Huck Finn” — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
Literature is well enough, as a time-passer, and for the improvement and general elevation and purification of mankind, but it has no… — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
Jane Austen's books, too, are absent from this library. Just that one omission alone would make a fairly good library out of… — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
A public library is the most enduring of memorials, the trustiest monument for the preservation of an event or a name or… — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
I should be sorry to think it was the publishers themselves they got up this entire little flutter to enable them to… — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
“I like Joan of Arc best of all my books; and it is the best; I know it perfectly well. And besides,… — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
I don't believe any of you have ever read Paradise Lost, and you don't want to. That's something that you just want… — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
“A public library is the most enduring of memorials, the trustiest monument for the preservation of an event or a name or… — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
“This book is merely a personal narrative, and not a pretentious history or a philosophical dissertation. It is a record of several… — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
Authorship is not a trade, it is an inspiration; authorship does not keep an office, its habitation is all out under the… — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
an Autobiography is the truest of all books; for while it inevitably consists mainly of extinctions of the truth, shirkings of the… — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it. — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
Just the omission of Jane Austen's books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book… — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
Writing is the easiest thing in the world… Just try it sometime. I sit up with a pipe in my mouth and… — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
Don't look at the world with your hands in your pockets. To write about it you have to reach out and touch… — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
Great books are weighed and measured by their style and matter and not by the trimmings and shadings of their grammer. — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
I like a thin book because it will Steady a Table, a leather volume because it will Strop a Razor, and a… — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
The reason why truth is so much stranger than fiction is that there is no requirement for it to be consistent. — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
“T[he rules of writing] require that the episodes in a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help to… — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense. — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to… — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
when you recollect something which belonged in an earlier chapter, do not go back, but jam it in where you are .… — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through… — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
It is a good thing to write for the amusement of the public, but it is a far higher and nobler thing… — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
Sing like no one's listening, love like you've never been hurt, dance like nobody's watching, and live like its heaven on earth. — Mark Twain Copy Share
If you had made the acquiring of ignorance the study of your life, you could not have graduated with higher honor than you could… — Mark Twain Copy Share
“The Creator sat upon the throne, thinking. Behind him stretched the illimitable continent of heaven, steeped in a glory of light and color; before… — Mark Twain Copy Share
A man accustomed to American food and American domestic cookery would not starve to death suddenly in Europe, but I think he would gradually… — Mark Twain Copy Share
I never write Metropolis for seven cents because I can get the same price for city. I never write policeman because I can get… — Mark Twain Copy Share
The higher animals get their teeth without pain or inconvenience. Man gets his through months and months of cruel torture; he will never get… — Mark Twain Copy Share
“As far as I can see, Italy, for fifteen hundred years, has turned all her energies, all her finances, and all her industry to… — Mark Twain Copy Share
Many public-school children seem to know only two dates—1492 and 4th of July; and as a rule they don't know what happened on either… — Mark Twain Copy Share
If we could imagine such a man, that is a man who could invent the fly and send him out on his mission and… — Mark Twain Copy Share
You perceive, now, that these things are all impossible except in a dream. You perceive that they are pure and puerile insanities, the silly… — Mark Twain Copy Share
Lord save us all from a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms. — Mark Twain Copy Share