Mark Twain Quote

Looking for Mark Twain quotes, I found that I had heard (and liked) many before. One such quote was: "The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated." For some reason, when reading this, I think of Paul McCartney! Apparently rumours marked Samuel Clemens as dead (much like the "Paul is dead" myth that circulated widely once upon a time and is still being told by some people today). Like a lot of the Mark Twain quotes I read, this one is funny because the way he says it makes it so blatantly obvious.

Another quote I really like (and I know we are only required to write one) is " Don't say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream." Mrs. Pitman had this on her wall when I was in sophomore English. It actually did impact me in my writing. What I think Twain means by saying it is that narratives tend to be disconnected from the story they are telling. By giving characters their own voices, the story is more believable and seems to come alive.
(I do wonder, though, if he meant that saying "The old lady screamed" would be worse than trying to vocalize her scream, like "The old lady said, 'Aaaaaaah!'," which, to me, looks a little silly.)

Team Poe

...because he'd be so much better with Bella than Irving could ever be.

Lame and obvious joking aside, I'm firmly a Poe fan. Irving's work doesn't strike me as that enjoyable to read, to me personally of course. Poe, though, is deep, and (as we discussed in class) uses a lot of awesome language. I love his poetry especially. There was a time when I tried to memorize "The Raven" (and I have successfully memorized most of it, haha), and of course there's my favorite Poe poem, "A Dream Within a Dream." For those of you unfamiliar with it, it goes:

Take this kiss upon the brow
And, in parting from you now,
This much let me avow:
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream
Yet, if hope has flown away
In a night or in a day,
In a vision or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand.
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep
While I weep!--while I weep!
O God! Can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! Can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

(Any errors in the above should be attributed to my faulty memory, but otherwise I guess you'll just have to trust me that I didn't look this one up.)

"A Dream Within a Dream" is one of Poe's lesser-known works, but I find it resonated with me a lot. I love the rhyme and the subject, the language and the imagery, the metaphors and the emotion in it. And I suppose that's what I love about Poe's work the most. He writes creepiness really well, but he recognizes beauty within his works also.