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"Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot."
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"This philistinism of interpretation is more rife in literature than in any other art. For decades now, literary critics have understood it to be their task to translate the elements of the poem or play or novel or story into something else. Sometimes a writer will be so uneasy before the naked power of his art that he will install within the work itself - albeit with a little shyness, a touch of the good taste of irony - the clear and explicit interpretation of it. Thomas Mann is an example of such an overcooperative author. In the case of more stubborn authors, the critic is only too happy to perform the job."
"Literature is where I go to explore the highest and lowest places in human society and in the human spirit, where I hope to find not absolute truth but the truth of the tale, of the imagination, and of the heart."
"A book is as private and consensual as sex."
"And all who told it added something new And all who heard it made enlargements too."
"For the narrative to exist, so that it could be read and reread even if I was taken away. Stories outlive their writers all the time. We know plenty about Goethe and Charles Dickens from what they chose to tell, even though they have been dead for years."
"This book is the book you have just read. It's done."
"I haven't stuck to any formula. Most great writers stick to the same style, but I wanted to be more various."
Explore more quotes by Mark Twain
"The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little."
"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it."
"It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare."
"It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."
"Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first."
"Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't."
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