Mark Twain Quotes

Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't.

Mark Twain

• Truth

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Quotes to Explore

• If men can quilt and take over the kitchen, then women can pick up a wrench and fix a leaky pipe.

  

  Hanna Rosin
  • Up
  • Men
  • Women

• I teach my children that in life, there is no control of what tomorrow is going to bring. There really isn't. But in whatever it brings, we have choices, and I'm glad because I made more right choices than wrong, but in the wrong choices, there are lessons to be learned.

  

  BeBe Winans
  • Life
  • Children
  • Control

• There is no diplomacy like candor.

  

  E. V. Lucas
  • Like
  • Diplomacy
  • Candor

• In our local Baptist church, I sang in the choir and formed a gospel quartet. When our minister caught me messing with his guitar, he taught me three positions – one, four and five. After that, I taught myself to play.

  

  B. B. King
  • Play
  • Church
  • Taught

• I never quite toed the line. I was a bit disruptive. All my early school reports from the age of 5 were 'Daniel must learn not to distract others.' And now, that's what I do for a living.

  

  Dan Stevens
  • School
  • Age
  • Learn

• As a result of 50 years of emancipation, feminine qualities were dying out or being transferred to the males. Pansies of both sexes were everywhere, not yet completely homosexual, but confused not knowing what they were. The result was a herd of unhappy sexual misfits... the women wanting to dominate and the men to be nannied.

  

  Ian Fleming
  • Men
  • Women
  • Dying

• It could be that all awful dictators are frustrated artists - Mao with his poetry and Mussolini with his monuments. Stalin was once a journalistic hack, and I can personally testify to how frustrated they are. Pol Pot left a very edgy photo collection behind. And Osama seems quite interested in video.

  

  P. J. O'Rourke
  • Poetry
  • Very
  • I Can

• All Hollywood corrupts; and absolute Hollywood corrupts absolutely.

  

  Edmund Wilson
  • Hollywood
  • Corrupts

• I've always felt so fortunate to have writing to turn to every day. I'm obsessed with it.

  

  Patrick deWitt
  • Writing
  • Day
  • Everyday

• The United Nations Children's Fund reports that more than 18 million children worldwide have lost both parents to the ravages of AIDS, starvation, war or natural disasters.

  

  Foster Friess
  • Children
  • War
  • Parents

• I had no ambition to go to America and be in a TV show. It's not like I've rejected something or decided that I've found something better. Your life just takes you off in strange and different directions.

  

  Damian Lewis
  • Life
  • Different
  • America

• Public appearances are a headache. I hold mine down to a minimum.

  

  Jack Nicklaus
  • Down
  • Mine
  • Appearances

• Food is not a means toward resolution. It can't cure heartbreak or solve untenable dilemmas.

  

  Kate Christensen
  • Food
  • Resolution
  • Heartbreak

• There's many women now who think, 'Surely we don't need feminism anymore, we're all liberated and society's accepting us as we are'. Which is just hogwash. It's not true at all.

  

  Yoko Ono
  • Women
  • True
  • Think

• I've always thought about my legacy - more so, though, my impact off the field and how I'm helping my community and solidifying and strengthening the lives of others around me. And also, I just want to be a dominant football player, too. So it encompasses everything.

  

  Larry Fitzgerald
  • Community
  • Football
  • Player

• Attack politics costs us dearly in terms of insight into the candidates. In a presidential campaign, the focus is so tight that the politicians are afraid to say anything that hasn't been scripted.

  

  Jack Germond
  • Focus
  • Politics
  • Presidential

• When the Transportation Security Administration adopted body scanners at airports, activists wrote the Fourth Amendment on their underwear in metallic paint readable by the new devices.

  

  Dana Priest
  • Security
  • Transportation

• I genuinely want to do my best every day, and I genuinely want to enjoy life every day.

  

  Landon Donovan
  • Life
  • Day
  • Best

• If you are constantly making judgments based on superficial affiliations, your world gets to be pretty small.

  

  Larry Brilliant
  • World
  • Pretty
  • You

• jazz and Neo-Plasticism are highly revolutionary phenomena: they are destructive constructive. They do not destroy the actual content of form, but rather deepen form only in order to elevate it to a new order. They break the bonds of 'form as individuality' in order to make possible a universal unity.

  

  Piet Mondrian
  • Unity

• I loved her. I still love her, though I curse her in my sleep, so nearly one are love and hate, the two most powerful and devasting emotions that control man, nations, life.

  

  Edgar Rice Burroughs
  • Life
  • Love
  • Hate

• Intergenerational support is crucial. I feel like generations give up on each other. If you're Gen Z, you're like, "Gen X is never gonna get it." If you're Gen X, you're like, "Those Millennials are such idiots."

  

  Yara Shahidi
  • Up
  • Giving
  • Support

• The truth is, for however much my stories come out of things that have happened to me, they're not darkly or as deeply personal as someone like Marc Maron or a lot of comedians, but they are essentially my life and my interpretation of it.

  

  Eugene Mirman
  • Truth
  • Stories
  • Interpretation

• Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't.

  

  Mark Twain
  • Truth