“The poorest paid architect, engineer, general, author, sculptor, painter, lecturer, advocate, legislator, actor, preacher, singer is constructively in heaven when he is at work; and as for the musician with the fiddle-bow in his hand who sits in the midst of a great orchestra with the ebbing and flowing tides of divine sound washing over him--why, certainly, he is at work, if you wish to call it that, but lord, it's a sarcasm just the same.”

American writer, humorist, and essayist

Mark Twain was the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, an American writer, humorist, and essayist. He is best known for the novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and for a body of work that helped define American writing in the late 19th century. His books also include A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and Pudd'nhead Wilson. He co-wrote The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today with Charles Dudley Warner. Twain's work is marked by wit, social satire, and a sharp eye for American life.