Current Exhibition

Mark Twain's Quotes About Authors

Rarely did a writer escape Twain's editorial comment, especially those he admired, and those he loved to hate. Here is a selection of comments from Mark Twain about some authors whose works he read.

On James Fennimore Cooper:
"Cooper's eye was splendidly inaccurate."

To William Dean Howells:
"You are really my only author; I am restricted to you; I wouldn't give a damn for the rest."

To George Iles about his book, Inventors at Work: Chapters on Discovery:
"Just the kind of reading I enjoy the most. There'll not be any skipping done, you may be sure of that."

On The Rubiyat of Omar Khayyam:
"No poem has ever given me so much pleasure before, and none has given me so much pleasure since; it is the only poem I have ever carried about with me; it has not been from under my hand in twenty-eight years."

On Robert Browning:
"One's glimpses and confusions as one reads Browning, remind me of looking through a telescope. You toil across dark spaces which are (to your lens) empty; but every now & then a splendor of stars & suns bursts upon you and fills the whole field with flame."

On the joy of reading:
"You can find in a text whatever you bring, if you will stand between it and the mirror of your imagination."