Mark Twain Quotes

I don't use the word lightly, in fact, I don't use it at all, but Ben Marcus is a genius, one of the most daring, funny, morally engaged and brilliant writers, someone whose work truly makes a difference in the world. His prose is, for me, awareness objectified-he makes the word new and thus the world.

There is the same difference between talent and genius that there is between a stone mason and a sculptor

Norman Mailer thinks William Burroughs is a genius, which I think is ludicrous beyond words. I don't think William Burroughs has an ounce of talent.

No one ever was a great poet, that applied himself much to anything else.

A neurotic can perfectly well be a literary genius, but his greatest danger is always that he will not recognize when he is dull.

Genius, like truth, has a shabby and neglected mien.

Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered--either by themselves or by others.

Among the English authors, Shakespeare has incomparably excelled all others. That noble extravagance of fancy, which he had in so great perfection, thoroughly qualified him to touch the weak, superstitious part of his readers' imagination, and made him capable of succeeding where he had nothing to support him besides the strength of his own genius.

Philip Roth is a good writer, but I wouldn't want to shake hands with him.

The difference between talent and genius is in the direction of the current: in genius, it is from within outward; in talent from without inward.

Common sense is only a modification of talent. Genius is an exaltation of it. The difference is, therefore, in degree, not nature.

Genius is supposed to be a power of producing excellences which are put of the reach of the rules of art: a power which no precepts can teach, and which no industry can acquire.

Shakespeare had no tutors but nature and genius. He caught his faults from the bad taste of his contemporaries. In an age still less civilized Shakespeare might have been wilder, but would not have been vulgar.

All men of genius, and all those who have gained rank in the republic of letters, are brothers, whatever may be the land of their nativity.

I think Yelena Akhtiorskaya is a genius. What she manages to do, linguistically and emotionally, in the span of a single sentence, is astonishing.

The concept of genius as akin to madness has been carefully cultivated by the inferiority complex of the public.

Genius is mainly an affair of energy, and poetry is mainly an affair of genius; therefore a nation whose spirit is characterized by energy may well be imminent in poetry - and we have Shakespeare.

There has never been any great genius without a spice of madness.

There have only been two authentic geniuses in the world, Willie Mays and Willie Shakespeare and I think you'd better put Shakespeare first, darling.

If you study a great work of art, you'll probably find the artist was a kind of genius. And geniuses are different to you and me.

Beerbohm was a genius of the purest kind. He stands at the summit of his art.

Be a good craftsman; it won't stop you from being a genius.

You can't be a proper writer without a touch of madness, can you?

Genius is only the power of making continuous efforts.