Politics has become incendiary. People don’t find it so funny now so I have to be careful, but I have to wake them up with some truths and the truths I aim at them are over 100 years old. Facts that no one can dispute.
When the audience begins to see the sunrise on that it’s hard for them to turn away from it because they’re listening to a man talking to them from over a century ago. And nothing has changed. So what are you going to do about that?
I don’t play golf. Mark Twain is golf to me.
There was so much to learn and it was all fun. But the best part was getting a laugh from an audience. That was like drowning in candy.
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.
There’s no good guys and bad guys.
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.
To communicate with each other, we got to get mad at each other sometimes.
Mark Twain cannot be defined.
I like to be who I am.
Death ends a life. But it doesn’t end a relationship.
I have a suicide impulse.
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.
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.
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.
Success is no longer content. It’s how it sells.
I tended to lean toward character work. I love to disguise myself.
I walked the streets of New York for two years begging for a job, and I couldn’t get one.