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Quotes by Mark Twain

'The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. 'tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.'

'The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters; the good to succeed, the bad to fail. The trouble with most fiction is that you want them all to land in hell, together, as quickly as possible.'

'The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters; the good to succeed, the bad to fail. The trouble with most fiction is that you want them all to land in hell, together, as quickly as possible.'

'There ain't nothing more to write about and I'm rotten glad of it, because if I'd knowed what a trouble it was to make a book, I wouldn't a tackled it.'

in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

'There ain't nothing more to write about and I'm rotten glad of it, because if I'd know'd what trouble it was to make a book, I wouldn't a tackled it.'

in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

'Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.'

'Every time I read a Jane Austen novel, I feel like a bartender at the gates of heaven.'

'The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.'

'"Classic". A book which people praise and don't read.'

'Write without pay until somebody offers pay. If nobody offers within three years, the candidate may look upon this circumstance with the most implicit confidence as the sign that sawing wood is what he was intended for.'

'Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.'

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