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Perhaps the most
frequently quoted writer who ever lived is Mark Twain. After all, who
has not heard his ever-popular saying "The difference between the right
word and the almost right word is the difference between the lightning
and the lightning bug"? Below, I have gathered some of Mark Twain's
popular quotes on writing, publishing, and literature (there is even one
on the subject of copyright which I found most amusing). So, if you are
looking for inspiration, or perhaps just some light reading that is bound
to put a smile on your face, you should find this page useful.
Bonnie
Mercure
Writing
Quotations
of Mark Twain
An
author values a compliment even when it comes from a source of doubtful
competency
. - Mark Twain
in Eruption
When
an honest writer discovers an imposition it is his simple duty to strip
it bare and hurl it down from its place of honor, no matter who suffers
by it; any other course would render him unworthy of the public confidence.
- Mark Twain in A Tramp Abroad
I conceive
that the right way to write a story for boys is to write so that it will
not only interest boys but strongly interest any man who has ever been a
boy. That immensely enlarges the audience.
- Mark Twain in a Letter to Fred J. Hall.
We write
frankly and fearlessly but then we "modify" before we print.
- Mark Twain in
Life on the Mississippi
It is
no use to keep private information which you can't show off.
- Mark Twain in
"An Author's Soldiering," 1887
Experience
of life (not of books) is the only capital usable in such a book as you
have attempted; one can make no judicious use of this capital while it is
new.
-Mark Twain in a letter to Bruce Weston Munro, 10/21/1881 (Karanovich collection)
Well,
my book is written--let it go. But if it were only to write over again there
wouldn't be so many things left out. They burn in me; and they keep multiplying;
but now they can't ever be said. And besides, they would require a library--and
a pen warmed up in hell.
- Mark Twain in a Letter to W. D. Howells, 9/22/1889 (referring to Connecticut
Yankee)
I wrote
the rest of The Innocents Abroad in sixty days and I could have added a
fortnight's labor with the pen and gotten along without the letters altogether.
I was very young in those days, exceedingly young, marvelously young, younger
than I am now, younger than I shall ever be again, by hundreds of years.
I worked every night from eleven or twelve until broad daylight in the morning,
and as I did 200,000 words in the sixty days, the average was more than
3,000 words a day- nothing for Sir Walter Scott, nothing for Louis Stevenson,
nothing for plenty of other people, but quite handsome for me. In 1897,
when we were living in Tedworth Square, London, and I was writing the book
called Following the Equator, my average was 1,800 words a day; here in
Florence (1904) my average seems to be 1,400 words per sitting of four or
five hours.
- From Autobiography of Mark Twain
You need
not expect to get your book right the first time. Go to work and revamp
or rewrite it. God only exhibits his thunder and lightning at intervals,
and so they always command attention. These are God's adjectives. You thunder
and lightning too much; the reader ceases to get under the bed, by and by.
- Mark Twain
in a Letter to Orion Clemens, 3/23/1878
The time
to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction.
By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is that
you really want to say.
- From Mark Twain's Notebook, 1902-1903
To get
the right word in the right place is a rare achievement. To condense the
diffused light of a page of thought into the luminous flash of a single
sentence, is worthy to rank as a prize composition just by itself...Anybody
can have ideas--the difficulty is to express them without squandering a
quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.
- Mark Twain in a Letter to Emeline Beach, 2/10/1868
Let us
guess that whenever we read a sentence & like it, we unconsciously store
it away in our model-chamber; & it goes, with the myriad of its fellows,
to the building, brick by brick, of the eventual edifice which we call our
style.
- Mark Twain in a Letter to George Bainton, 10/15/1888; (first printed in
The Art of Authorship: Literary Reminiscences, Methods of Work, and Advice
to Young Beginners, Personally Contributed by Leading Authors of the Day.)
I notice
that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That
is the way to write English - it is the modern way and the best way. Stick
to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch
an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them -
then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together.
They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy,
diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid
of as any other vice.
- Mark Twain in a Letter to D. W. Bowser, 3/20/1880
There
is only one brief, solitary law for letter-writing, and yet you either do
not know that law, or else you are so stupid that you never think of it.
It is very easy and simple: Write only about things and people your correspondent
takes a living interest in.
--Mark Twain in A Complaint About Correspondents
Nothing
in the world affords a newspaper reporter so much satisfaction as gathering
up the details of a bloody and mysterious murder, and writing them up with
aggravated circumstantiality.
--Mark Twain in The Killing of Julius Caesar "Localized"
Classic--a
book which people praise and don't read.
- Mark Twain in Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar
You can
find in a text whatever you bring, if you will stand between it and the
mirror of your imagination.
- From "A Fable"
When
I am king, they shall not have bread and shelter only, but also teachings
out of books, for a full belly is little worth where the mind is starved.
- From Twain's The Prince and the Pauper
The index
of a book should always be written by the author, even though the book itself
should be the work of another hand.
- From Remembered Yesterdays
...great
books are weighed and measured by their style and matter and not by the
trimmings and shadings of their grammer.
- From Mark Twain, a Biography
A successful
book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.
- Mark Twain in a Letter to H. H. Rogers, 5/1897
I have
been an author for 20 years and an ass for 55.
- From Mark Twain, a Biography
Experience
is an author's most valuable asset; experience is the thing that puts the
muscle and the breath and the warm blood into the book he writes.
- From Is Shakespeare Dead
Authorship
is not a trade, it is an inspiration; authorship does not keep an office,
its habitation is all out under the sky, and everywhere the winds are blowing
and the sun is shining and the creatures of God are free.
- Mark Twain in A petition to the Queen of England, 1887 (plea for exemption
from English tax on royalties)
I never
saw an author who was aware that there is any dimensional difference between
a fact and a surmise.
- quoted in My Father Mark Twain, by Clara Clemens
There
are three infallible ways of pleasing an author, and the three form a rising
scale of compliment: 1, To tell him you have read one of his books; 2, To
tell him you have read all of his books; 3, To ask him to let you read the
manuscripts of his forthcoming book. No. 1 admits you to his respect; no.
2 admits you to his admiration; No. 3 carries you clear into his heart.
- From Pudd'nhead Wilson
Criticism
is a queer thing. If I print "She was stark naked"--& then proceeded to
describe her person in detail, what critic would not howl?--who would venture
to leave the book on a parlor table. --but the artist does this & all ages
gather around & look & talk & point. I can't say, "They cut his head off,
or stabbed him, &c" describe the blood & the agony in his face.
- From Mark Twain's Notebook #18, Feb. - Sept. 1879
Whenever
I enjoy anything in art it means that it is mighty poor. The private knowledge
of this fact has saved me from going to pieces with enthusiasm in front
of many and many a chromo.
- From Twain's "At the Shrine of St. Wagner"
I am
glad the old masters are all dead, and I only wish they had died sooner.
- From Twain's "Academy of Design," letter to San Francisco Alta California,
July 28, 1867
Only
one thing is impossible for God: to find any sense in any copyright law
on the planet.
- From Mark Twain's Notebook, 1902-1903
But language
is a treacherous thing, a most unsure vehicle, and it can seldom arrange
descriptive words in such a way that they will not inflate the facts--by
help of the reader's imagination, which is always ready to take a hand and
work for nothing, and do the bulk of it at that.
- From Following the Equator
The difference
between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter--it's
the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.
- From Mark Twain's Letter to George Bainton, 10/15/1888
My works
are like water. The works of the great masters are like wine. But everyone
drinks water.
- From Mark Twain's Notebook, 1885
High
and fine literature is wine, and mine is only water; but everybody likes
water.
- Mark Twain in a Letter to W. D. Howells, 2/15/1887
It makes
one hope and believe that a day will come when, in the eye of the law, literary
property will be as sacred as whiskey, or any other of the necessaries of
life. It grieves me to think how far more profound and reverent a respect
the law would have for literature if a body could only get drunk on it.
- Mark Twain's Dinner speech 12/8/1881
Creed
and opinion change with time, and their symbols perish; but Literature and
its temples are sacred to all creeds and inviolate.
- Mark Twain's Letter to the Millicent [Rogers] Library, 2/22/1894
Delicacy
- a sad, sad false delicacy - robs literature of the two best things among
its belongings: Family-circle narratives & obscene stories.
- Mark Twain in a Letter to W. D. Howells, 9/19/1877
I have
never tried, in even one single little instance, to help cultivate the cultivated
classes. I was not equipped for it either by native gifts or training. And
I never had any ambition in that direction, but always hunted for bigger
game--the masses. I have seldom deliberately tried to instruct them, but
I have done my best to entertain them, for they can get instruction elsewhere.
- From Mark Twain, a Biography
Comedy
keeps the heart sweet; but we all know that there is wholesome refreshment
for both mind and heart in an occasional climb among the pomps of the intellectual
snow-summits built by Shakespeare and those others.
- "About Play-Acting"
...I
could not consent to deliver judgment upon any one's manuscript, because
an individual's verdict [is] worthless...The great public [is] the only
tribunal competent to sit in judgment upon a literary effort.
- "Concerning the Carnival of Crime in Connecticut"
No man
has an appreciation so various that his judgment is good upon all varieties
of literary work.
- quoted in My Father Mark Twain, Clara Clemens
In literature
imitations do not imitate.
- More Maxims of Mark, Johnson
For more of Mark Twain's
quotes on writers and writing, check out Mark Dawidziak's collection MARK
MY WORDS. Available from amazon.com.
Read The
Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County by Mark Twain
Visit
Fiction Hub
Bonnie
Mercure, your
Fiction Guide at the dowse
Fiction Hub and compiler of this page, is a dark fantasy
author. Visit her
website
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