A biography for Hal Holbrookhasn’t been written yet.
“You can go into Mark Twain's material and prove anything you want. He was against war. He was for war. He was against rich people and he was for them. He was a kaleidoscope.”
“I got a feeling about political correctness. I hate it. It causes us to lie silently instead of saying what we think.”
“I have a suicide impulse.”
“I don't have a director. The audience directs me.”
“I developed a resistance to authority. Not to discipline - I learned that. But to authority. I like to think for myself. And I like to cause trouble.”
“Man is the religious animal. He is the only one that's got true religion, several of them.”
“To communicate with each other, we got to get mad at each other sometimes.”
“One of the problems with putting Huck Finn into a movie or on the stage is, you always make the white people stupid and racist. The point is, they don't know they're racist.”
“Mark Twain cannot be defined.”
“I like to be who I am.”
“We don't have truth delivered to us very often, especially in this very commercialized world.”
“We live in a democracy. We have this extraordinary opportunity to use our mind and say what we think, speak as we think. Sometimes what we say is objectionable to other people. But that is part of a free society.”
“There's no good guys and bad guys.”
“Man looks in the abyss, there's nothing staring back at him. At that moment, man finds his character. And that is what keeps him out of the abyss.”