I read everything I could find in English - Twain, Henry James, Hemingway, really everything. And then after a while I started writing shorter pieces in English, and one of them got published in a literary magazine and that's how it got started. After that, graduate school didn't seem very important.
Aleksandar Hemon
Twain's 'A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court' made me long to wake in an era when my Casio wristwatch would strike folks as sorcery, and Martin Amis's 'Time's Arrow' wrecked my assumption that all narratives had to proceed from Then to More-Recently-Than-Then.
Anthony Doerr
Every Shania Twain interview ends with someone asking, 'Which Beatles album have you always wanted to cover, given the chance?'
Antony Johnston
Someone asked why I invited Jon Stewart to be the first guest on the 'Journal''s premiere in 2007. 'Because Mark Twain isn't available,' I answered. I was serious.
Bill Moyers
Mark Twain gave us an insight into the life on the Mississippi at the turn of the century.
Bob Newhart
The first album I owned was probably a Backstreet Boys album, and shortly after was Shania Twain.
Cassadee Pope
I was writing waltzes at a time when the most popular thing was Shania Twain and the very pop edge of country. I didn't really know how to do much of that.
Chris Stapleton
Mark Twain's Roughing It is a book that many people don't know about, but I highly recommend to anybody at any age.
Chuck Jones
I've had to stop going to the nearest grocery store that seems to play Shania Twain's 'Forever and For Always' whenever I'm there. It's hard to shop for frozen entrees through cold-air blasted tears. Feels good on a flushed face though.
David Berman
When I was a young child and before he had left us for the U.S., my father would give me Mark Twain novels. In the characters, the weather and the context, my father must have seen many parallels to his own youth in the Caribbean in the 1930s and 40s.
David Lammy
My office walls are covered with autographs of famous writers - it's what my children call my 'dead author wall.' I have signatures from Mark Twain, Earnest Hemingway, Jack London, Harriett Beecher Stowe, Pearl Buck, Charles Dickens, Rudyard Kipling, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, to name a few.
Debbie Macomber
Bob Hope, like Mark Twain, had a sense of humor that was uniquely American, and like Twain, we'll likely not see another like him.
Dick Van Dyke
I am built funny. Picture Mark Twain's head on Ichabod Crane's body. Now hold your mental picture to the light and crumple it.
Donald McCaig
All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.
Ernest Hemingway
Shania Twain brought a whole other fan base to country music with her sound, the way the videos were produced.
Faith Hill
Lincoln was the Twain of our politics.
Fred Kaplan
Lift others and yourself as you rise above this mess of comparison. Thank God for those who embraced their true selves and gave us gifts that only they could give: from Steve Jobs to Michael Jackson to Ray Charles to Mark Twain. There are so many more, and the list goes on.
Grace Gealey
You can go into Mark Twain's material and prove anything you want. He was against war. He was for war. He was against rich people and he was for them. He was a kaleidoscope.
Hal Holbrook
Mark Twain cannot be defined.
Those who have heard me speak from time to time know that quite often I cite the observation of that great American author, Mark Twain, who said, history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.
J. D. Hayworth
Tacked above my desk are photos of artists I admire - Hopper, Sargent, Twain - and postcards from beloved bookstores where I've spent all my time and money - Tattered Cover, Elliot Bay, Harvard Bookstore.
I grew up reading Shakespeare and Mark Twain.
When you study history in American schools, very rarely is the name John Brown mentioned. We know who Kanye West is or Twyla Tharp or Shania Twain.
I grew up with Mark Twain, and we had the complete Hemingway at home, of course in German translation.
America's Facebook generation shows a submission to standardization that I haven't seen before. The American adventure has always been about people forgetting their former selves - Samuel Clemens became Mark Twain, Jack Kerouac went on the road. If they had a Facebook page, they wouldn't have been able to forget their former selves.
I first read 'Tom Sawyer' when I was in 8th grade, 13 years old. I realised since that Mark Twain just bottled what it felt like to be a child.
Twain is my keystone. He reminds me of my people because that's the way they told stories.
Right from the start, I loved the works of Mark Twain. Every time I read about Tom Sawyer, I'd go out and do something low-level naughty, just like him.
Mark Twain was very unhappy with himself for various reasons. He was very unhappy with America of this time. He thought it was terrible we had no anti-lynching laws, and he was also a feminist, and he was also very concerned with anti-Semitism. He was a good man, but he was hard on himself.
Madeleine L'Engle's 'A Wrinkle in Time' has been targeted by censors for promoting New Ageism, and Mark Twain's 'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' for promoting racism. Gee, where does that leave the kids?
Well, I was in the generation of CDs, so when I moved to L.A., I think I probably brought my Shania Twain 'Come on Over' CD and that's about it.
I have never been one for musicians. I know girls are supposed to go crazy for frontmen who close their eyes when they sing and nod their heads when the drums kick in, but I'm like Shania Twain with that stuff: That don't impress me much. I'll take wit and brains over the ability to carry a tune any day.
I wouldn't be an artist if I didn't have Shania Twain, Faith Hill, Taylor Swift to look up to.
I bought a book of Mark Twain quotes. That's about my speed. I'll read a couple quotes and put it down.
Students don't know who Mark Twain was because he wasn't on the test.
My favorite singer was Shania Twain. I would love for her to sing with me. And J. Lo - they are my favorites.
When I was a kid, I was obsessed with Shania Twain. I would always go sing the song 'Honey I'm Home.' I was, like, 12, and I'm singing about coming home from work and PMS and stuff.
Shania Twain and Martina McBride and all these wonderful women were saying that it's awesome to be a woman, and it's awesome to be a confident woman. Obviously, I could never compare myself to them, and I want to be my own thing, but I think that message is what I want to say as an artist.
In the end, censoring a comedian's jokes is on par with censoring 'Huckleberry Finn.' Now, I'm not comparing myself to Mark Twain - he had much wavier hair and a slightly thicker mustache. But when you deny an artist the chance to explore his art, you're forcing your beliefs on him.
Shakespeare, Dickens, Mark Twain, and so many others were my dearest friends and greatest teachers.
My music comes from country music. Merle Haggard is God, and I do believe that. I'm not too tuned in to country music. I don't know who Brooks and Dunn are. I like Shania Twain, though!
I'm a big John Steinbeck fan. Cormac McCarthy. I've always loved the stories of regular people. Mark Twain, too. When you look back at some of the epic writers of our country's history, very rarely do you find upper-class royalty. We seem to delve into the struggle of life and the labor of life much more frequently.
I'd love for us to be on our way to having a career like Reba McEntire or Shania Twain; to be Entertainer of the Year, to have headlined big tours, and really be women when we're doing it.
My parents were big music fans, and my dad plays music, so I grew up with Madonna, Frank Zappa, the Beatles, Alice In Chains... it was all over the place. I had a Third Eye Blind record, but I also had Korn, Courtney Love, and Shania Twain.
'White Christmas' is the best holiday song and I've grown up listening to Michael Buble's version with Shania Twain.
The best stories in our culture have some sort of subversiveness - Mark Twain, 'Catcher in the Rye.' You provide kids with great stories and teach them how to use the tools to make their own.
For someone who made such an enormous contribution to American literature, Mark Twain has been the subject of many books but few major biographies.
No, no, no separate but equal... never the twain shall meet. And the pendulum kept swinging and it came to rest in the bastard hybrid known as the Daily Show.
One posthumous measure of a person's life is how often you imagine his impossible return to deal with some event he never lived to encounter. You picture his reactions, his advice, his sage commentary and humorous asides. For instance, I think about Mark Twain's hypothetical take on current events several times a week.
Mark Twain was a great traveler and he wrote three or four great travel books. I wouldn't say that I'm a travel novelist but rather a novelist who travels - and who uses travel as a background for finding stories of places.
