Quotes About Author

Tom gave up the brush with reluctance in his face, but alacrity in his heart.

How blind and unreasoning and arbitrary are some of the laws of nature - the most of them, in fact!

the king he allowed he would drop over to t'other village without any plan, but just trust in Providence to lead him the profitable way - meaning the devil, I reckon.

He denounced him openly as a charlatan--a fraud with no valuable knowledge of any kind, or powers beyond those of an ordinary and rather inferior human being.

you give me much more of your sass I'll take and bounce a rock off'n your head.

If he was a wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would have comprehended that work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

What's gone with that boy,  I wonder? You TOM!

Foo-foo the First, King of the Mooncalves!

down and punching under the bed with the broom, and so she needed breath to punctuate the punches with. She resurrected nothing but the cat. "I never did see

she turned just in time to seize a small boy by the slack of his roundabout and arrest his flight.

Often, the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth.

she clung to him, she poured out her terrors, her unavailing regrets, and the far echoes turned them all to jeering laughter.

Their garment? Have they but one? Ah, good your Worship, what would they do with more? Truly they have not two bodies each.

had studied law an entire week, and then given it up because it was so prosy and tiresome.

Bible, and so the delivery of one of these prizes was a rare and noteworthy circumstance;

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 manuscript 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.

A new-comer of any age or either sex was an impressive curiosity in the poor little shabby village of St. Petersburg.

Many a reader who wanted to read a tale through was not able to do it because of delays on account of the weather. Nothing breaks up an author's progress like having to stop every few pages to fuss-up the weather. Thus it is plain that persistent intrusions of weather are bad for both reader and author.

What, warder, ho! the man that can blow so complacent a blast as that, probably blows it from a castle.

he strode down the street with his mouth full of harmony and his soul full of gratitude. He

T[he rules of writing] require that the episodes in a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help to develop it.

Concerning the difference between man and the jackass: some observers hold that there isn't any. But this wrongs the jackass. Notebook When

I have a prejudice against people who print things in a foreign language and add no translation. When I am the reader, and the author considers me able to do the translating myself, he pays me quite a nice compliment - but if he would do the translating for me I would try to get along without the compliment.

Jimmy Finn was not burned in the calaboose, but died a natural death in a tan vat, of a combination of delirium tremens and spontaneous combustion. When I say natural death, I mean it was a natural death for Jimmy Finn.