Author · Humorist · 1835–1910

Mark
Twain

Born Florida, Missouri · Died Redding, Connecticut

"The secret of getting ahead is getting started."

Samuel Clemens took the name of a Mississippi riverboat call and became the most quotable American who ever lived. Beneath the wit was a man who had seen everything — poverty, war, loss, fame, bankruptcy — and turned it all into something worth reading. He'll do the same with whatever you bring him.

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First 3 minutes free. Minutes 4 through 6 cost $2.99 total. After that, just $1.00 per minute.

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Mark Twain · c. 1907

What to Ask

To jog your imagination, here are 6 conversation starters. But you are encouraged to ask absolutely anything you want including questions of our present age. Your time with Twain is your own!

"What do you actually think of politicians?"

He spent decades skewering them in print. In person, with no editor, he'll be considerably less restrained.

"Did Huck Finn say what you really meant?"

The novel was banned. He was called a racist and a radical in the same breath. He'll tell you exactly what he intended.

"You went bankrupt twice. What did that feel like?"

Fame didn't protect him. A bad investment wiped him out. He paid every debt back — on a world lecture tour at 60.

"What was the Mississippi River really like?"

Not the myth. The actual river — the pilots, the gamblers, the corpses, the beauty of it at 4am in the dark.

"You predicted your own death. Did you believe it?"

Born with Halley's Comet in 1835. He said he'd go out with it. He did, in 1910. Ask him what he made of that.

"What's the funniest thing that ever happened to you?"

He lived a life of spectacular mishaps. Let him pick one. You won't be disappointed.

Mark Twain was not born clever. He was born poor, in a two-room cabin in Missouri, the sixth of seven children. His father died when he was eleven. He left school and went to work. He taught himself everything that mattered — in print shops, on riverboats, in Nevada silver camps, in the newsrooms of frontier papers.

The Mississippi made him. Four years as a licensed riverboat pilot gave him an education no university could match: human nature at close range, under pressure, with real consequences. When the Civil War shut down river traffic, he drifted west, tried silver mining, failed, and stumbled into journalism. The jumping frog story made him famous overnight. He never fully understood why.

His marriage to Olivia Langdon was the anchor of his life. He called her Livy. She edited his manuscripts, softened his rougher edges, and kept him — mostly — from self-destruction. When she died in 1904, he wrote: "I am a very old man and I have known no sorrow that was comparable to this." He had three years left.

In his final years he dictated his autobiography, insisting it not be published for a hundred years — so he could tell the full truth about people still living. That autobiography was finally released in 2010. He was right to wait.

MarkTwain

To jog your imagination, here are 6 conversation starters. But you are encouraged to ask absolutely anything you want including questions of our present age. Your time with Twain is your own!

Three minutes.One conversation.Never repeated.

Mark
Twain

Three minutes.
One conversation.
Never repeated.