Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. "Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar," ch. 15, Following the Equator (1897)

More from Mark Twain

• A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
• By his father he is English, by his mother he is American– to my mind the blend which makes the perfect man.
• By his father he is English, by his mother he is American-- to my mind the blend which makes the perfect man.
• Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
• Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.
• Everyone is a moon and has a dark side which he never shows to anyone.