[Mark] Twain is pointing at you. You, the reader of the book one hundred and thirty years ago and today. That is what has made it a great American novel and the most widely read book in American Literature around the world today.

Please don't refer to me as "channeling Mark Twain." I'm an actor. Not a channeler. That word is an iPhone shortcut. Acting is more eloquent than that.

Mark Twain cannot be defined.

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

If we want to understand the actions of a man in the early 1860's, put yourself back there in his shoes. As a young man he began piloting steamboats on the Mississippi, a job he loved and wanted to do the rest of his life, he said. The Civil War ended traffic on the River and his job. He wrote about it in A History of A Campaign That Failed. He said: "I joined the Confederacy, served for two weeks, deserted, and the Confederacy fell." His attachment to the Southern ideal of slavery does not appear very sturdy.

Lobbyists in Washington are making six figure salaries selling our government out to the corporate interests and we just sit and smile as if nothing is happening while the poor folks are getting poorer and their pharmaceutical bills rise.

[Mark] Twain was a publisher. He published General Grant's Memoirs (a big success) and had a hand in the publishing of many of his own books. He would, I think, be very keen about the question of how a book would sell.