Here are some of my favorite quotes from the resources I used to compile this performance.

“Traveling. My favorite traveling was on the Mississippi as a pilot, until the war came along. A steamboat pilot in those days was the only unfettered and entirely independent human being that lived on earth.”
(Life on the Mississippi)

“We went day and night by stagecoach to Carson City. Of course we’d stop and eat from time to time. Our driver could’ve eaten with us, but he wouldn’t have time to eat and get drunk both, so he gave his mind to making a masterpiece of only one.”
(A Tramp Abroad)

“How solemn and beautiful is the thought that the earliest pioneer of civilization is never the steamboat, never the railroad, never the newspaper, never the Sabbath school, never the missionary, but WHISKEY.”
(Life on the Mississippi)

“A reporter has to lie a little, of course, or they would discharge him. That is the only drawback to the profession. This is why I left it ... it is distressing to have to lie so. Lying is bad — lying is very bad. Every individual in this house knows that by experience. I think that for a man to tell a lie when he can’t profit by it is wrong.”
(Roughing It speech)

“But even those wonders became monotonous. In this connection, I want to say a word about Michelangelo Buonarroti. I used to worship the genius of Michelangelo, that man who was great at everything he undertook. But I don’t want Michelangelo for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I like change occasionally.

“In Genoa he designed everything. In Milan his pupils designed everything. In Padua, Verona, Venice, who did we hear about? In Florence he painted everything. But in Rome ... he designed St. Peters, the Pantheon, the Coliseum, the Pope, the uniforms of the Pope’s soldiers.

“I never felt so fervently thankful, so soothed, so tranquil, so filled with a blessed peace as I did when I found out Michelangelo was dead.”
(Innocents Abroad)

“We saw the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea. Neither of them 20 miles long or 13 miles wide. Yet, when I was in Sunday school I thought they were 60,000 miles in diameter. Travel and experience mar the grandest pictures and rob us of the most cherished traditions of childhood.”
(Innocents Abroad)

“And travel provides experience — lessons that are important in life; the person who takes a bull by the tail once has learned 60 or 70 times as much as a person that hasn’t. And a person who starts in to carry a cat home by the tail is getting knowledge that’s always going to be useful to him. After he’s carried that cat by the tail he won’t ever grow dim or doubtful about the experience.
(Tom Sawyer Abroad)

“I try speaking to the French in French. They don’t understand me. I repeat. They don’t understand. They appear to be very ignorant of French. When I use their language, I’m never mistaken for a Frenchman, except perhaps by horses.

“I don’t speak Italian. I don’t use Italian phrase books. They’re inadequate. They’re well enough as far as they go, but when you fall down and skin your leg they don’t tell you what to say.”
($30,000 Bequest)

“German on the other hand, I UNDERSTAND as well as the maniac that invented it; but I TALK best through an interpreter. It’s awful demeaning to the intellect, German is; you want to take it in small doses, or first thing you know your brains all run together. You can feel them washing around in your head like melted butter.”
(A Tramp Abroad)

“I once told our pastor that I hope to be cremated. He said, ‘I wouldn’t worry about that if I had your chances.’”
(Life on the Mississippi)