– Mark Twain, 1835-1910

"I don't mind what the opposition say of me so long as they don't tell the truth about me. But when they descend to telling the truth about me I consider that this is taking an unfair advantage."

- Speech, 1879

"Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't."

- Following the Equator, Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar

"My own luck has been curious all my literary life; I never could tell a lie that anyone would doubt, nor a truth that anybody would believe."

- Following the Equator

"But it was ever thus, all through my life: whenever I have diverged from custom and principle and uttered a truth, the rule has been that the hearer hadn't strength of mind enough to believe it."

- Autobiography of Mark Twain

"I have not professionally dealt in truth. Many when they come to die have spent all the truth that was in them, and enter the next world as paupers. I have saved up enough to make an astonishment there."

- Mark Twain's Notebook