Thursday, April 15, 2010

A Mark Twain quote that has always stuck with me is this one:

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.

The quote is from the beginning of his "The Adventures Huckleberry Finn" book.

I remember first hearing it when I was a freshman in college.
Our teacher asked us what we thought Mark Twain meant by that.
For the rest of the hour long(maybe it was longer) class everyone talked and argued about this simple quote.

I thought that what Mark Twain meant was:
Maybe you shouldn't waste an hour of your life arguing and examining a simple quote that tells you to NOT do that.
Yet...
there we all were examining and arguing over this quote.

The whole time I kept thinking,
I bet if the ghost of Mark Twain could sit in on this and watch us doing this he would probably laugh his ass off.

It's because of this that I decided back then and still continue to think that Mark Twain is one of the funniest people who have ever lived.

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