Huck Finn Quotes

If you think it ain't dismal and lonesome out in a fog that way, by yourself, in the night, you try it once – you'll see. ~ Mark Twain

Mark Twain didn't psychoanalyze Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer. Dickens didn't put Oliver Twist on the couch because he was hungry! Good copy comes out of people, Johnny, not out of a lot of explanatory medical terms. ~ Samuel Fuller

He had a dream and it shot him. ~ Mark Twain

I reck'n I knows what I knows. ~ Mark Twain

When I heard 'Moon River', at first I thought it was just a nice song, but then I started paying attention to the words and realized this song was about Huck Finn. I just love the words, that it's kind of you and me against the world, and we're going to make it together. ~ Drew Holcomb

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. ~ Hal Holbrook

It made me shiver. And I about made up my mind to pray, and see if I couldn't try to quit being the kind of a boy I was and be better. So I kneeled down. But the words wouldn't come. Why wouldn't they? It warn't no use to try and hide it from Him. Nor from ME, neither. I knowed very well why they wouldn't come. It was because my heart warn't right; it was because I warn't square; it was because I was playing double. I was letting ON to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all. I was trying to make my mouth SAY I would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go and write to that nigger's owner and tell where he was; but deep down in me I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it. You can't pray a lie--I found that out.

So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn't know what to do. At last I had an idea; and I says, I'll go and write the letter--and then see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as light as a feather right straight off, and my troubles all gone. So I got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote:

Miss Watson, your runaway nigger Jim is down here two mile below Pikesville, and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the reward if you send.

HUCK FINN.

I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn't do it straight off, but laid ~ Mark Twain

What a peach of a night this had turned out to be.

Everett fucking Moreau: master planner.

Like that little French guy who used to get with tall ladies to prove a point. Napoleon.

But not like him at all, except for they both ended up fucked on an island, if he didn't misremember his history. Or maybe it was Huck Finn who got fucked on an island.

Either way, he was the idiot getting fucked on a water-locked landmass this fine evening. ~ Eoin Colfer

I've grown up well, partly because there weren't great girls' literature - Nancy Drew, maybe - but there weren't things. So there was Huck Finn and "Spin And Marty." The boys characters were interesting and you lived through them when you're watching it. ~ Meryl Streep

Tom Sawyer said I was a numskull. ~ Mark Twain

In a culture that is becoming ever more story-stupid, in which a representative of the Coca-Cola company can, with a straight face, pronounce, as he donates a collection of archival Coca-Cola commercials to the Library of Congress, that 'Coca-Cola has become an integral part of people's lives by helping to tell these stories,' it is perhaps not surprising that people have trouble teaching and receiving a novel as complex and flawed as Huck Finn, but it is even more urgent that we learn to look passionately and technically at stories, if only to protect ourselves from the false and manipulative ones being circulated among us. ~ George Saunders

I read Norman Lock's The Boy in His Winter with delight and amazement. Styled in the vernacular of a rapidly changing America, it stays true to the themes of Mark Twain's original: class relations, race and slavery, childhood innocence, moral hypocrisy - and, of course, the stark beauty and unforgiving nature of America's greatest river. I finished this absolutely elegant narrative feeling that Huck Finn has never been more alive. ~ David Oshinsky

This ain't no thirty-seven year job, this is a thirty-eight year job, Tom Sawyer. ~ Mark Twain

Confound it, it's foolish, Tom ~ Mark Twain

Look at what I wrote at the beginning of this memoir. Have I caught anything at all of the extraordinary night when Paul Dempster was born? I am pretty sure that my little sketch of Percy Boyd Staunton is accurate, but what about myself? I have always sneered at autobiographies and memoirs in which the writer appears at the beginning as a charming, knowing little fellow, possessed of insights and perceptions beyond his years, yet offering these with false naivete to the reader, as though to say, 'What a little wonder I was, but All Boy.' Have the writers any notion or true collection of what a boy is?
I have and I have reinforced it by forty-five years of teaching boys. A boy is a man in miniature, and though he may sometimes exhibit notable virtue, as well as characteristics that seem to be charming because they are childlike, he is also schemer, self-seeker, traitor, Judas, crook, and villain - in short, a man. Oh these autobiographies in which the writer postures and simpers as a David Copperfield or a Huck Finn! False, false as harlots' oaths!
Can I write truly of my boyhood? Or will that disgusting self-love which so often attaches itself to a man's idea of his youth creep in and falsify the story? I can but try. And to begin I must give you some notion of the village in which Percy Boyd Staunton and Paul Dempster and I were born. ~ Robertson Davies

After a time, it seemed that the world inside the books became my world. So when I thought of my childhood, it was dandelion wine and ice cream on a summer porch, like Ray Bradbury, and catching catfish with Huck Finn. My own memories receded and the book memories became the real memories, far more than the outside, far more even than in here. ~ Rene Denfeld

Things settled into a lazy pattern. School, chores, and long hours down by the river. Kiernan talked about the books he read sometimes, even loaned me a few. But I liked it better when he read to me or just told me the stories. The words were more real that way, more exciting. Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, Ragged Dick, and all the others seemed flat and dull on the page, but Kiernan was good at making them come alive. ~ Rysa Walker

Sometimes I wish we could hear of a country that's out of kings. ~ Mark Twain

I grew up like Huck Finn, always outdoors, exploring, collecting frogs - there was space everywhere. I want my kids to experience that too. I love being outside. ~ Josh Duhamel

Siddhartha wants liberation, Dante wants Beatrice, Frodo wants to get to Mount Doom - we all want something. Quest is elemental to the human experience. All road narratives are to some extent built on quest. If you're a woman, though, this fundamental possibility of quest is denied. You can't go anywhere if you can't step out onto a road ...
... (T)here is no female counterpart in our culture to Ishmael or Huck Finn. There is no Dean Moriarty, Sal, or even a Fuckhead. It sounds like a doctoral crisis, but it's not. As a fifteen-year-old hitchhiker, my survival depended upon other people's ability to envision a possible future for me. Without a Melvillean or Kerouacian framework, or at least some kind of narrative to spell out a potential beyond death, none of my resourcefulness or curiosity was recognizable, and therefore I was unrecognizable. ~ Vanessa Veselka

I said, "Don't do nothing of the kind; it's one of the most jackass ideas I ever struck; ~ Mark Twain

There on the dune, beside the table, one of the camel boys has his arm around the other, and they sit there like that as they watch the sun. The dunes are turning the same shades of adobe and aqua as the buildings of Marrakech. Two boys, arms around each other. To Less, it seems so foreign. It makes him sad. In his world, he never sees straight men doing this. Just as a gay couple cannot walk hand in hand down the streets of Marrakech, he thinks, two men, best friends, cannot walk hand in hand down the streets of Chicago. They cannot sit on a dune like these teenagers and watch a sunset in each other's embrace. This Tom Sawyer love for Huck Finn. ~ Andrew Sean Greer

J. D. Salinger's Holden Caulfield is a literary descendant of Huck Finn: more educated and sophisticated, the son of affluent New Yorkers, but like Huck a youthful runaway from a world of adult hypocrisy, venality and, to use one of his own favourite words, phoniness. What particularly appals Holden is the eagerness of his peers to adopt that corrupt grownup behaviour. ~ David Lodge

If Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer were alive today, we'd say they had ADD or a conduct disorder. They [boys] are who they are, and we need to love them for who they are. Let's not try to rewire them. ~ Michael Gurian

But because I do not wish to be remembered (if I will be remembered) as a self-indulgent fantasist, I'll skip the purple patch for now, however much I wish to write it. I need to make amends for my indifference, for having turned my back on the world in favor of the beauties of the way. I'll try to study cruelty (I regret my own) and render it in more familiar terms. ~ Norman Lock

I wrote 'Tom Sawyer' and 'Huck Finn' for adults exclusively, and it always distressed me when I find that boys and girls have been allowed access to them. The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean. ~ Mark Twain

Giving jazz the Congressional seal of approval is a little like making Huck Finn an honorary Boy Scout. ~ Melvin Maddocks

It inspired a kind of Huck Finn moment when I decided it was better to risk hell than shrivel in the midst of a toxic Southern Baptist morality. ~ Kelly J. Cogswell

I reck'n I knows sense when I sees it; en dey ain' no sense in sich doin's as dat. ~ Mark Twain

You can't pray a lie" Huck Finn ~ Mark Twain

I believe that it is only through empathy, that the pain experienced by an Algerian woman, a North Korean dissident, a Rwandan child or an Iraqi prisoner, becomes real to me and not just passing news. And it is at times like this when I ask myself, am I prepared - like Huck Finn - to give up Sunday school heaven for the kind of hell that Huck chose? ~ Azar Nafisi

[On Jimmy Carter] Huck Finn. Loss of identity drives people to nostalgia. Electronic man has no physical body, so he puts nostalgia in its place. ~ Marshall McLuhan

It hadn't ever come home to me before, what this thing was that I was doing. ~ Mark Twain

The raft was seized, with a noise like needles knitting, and we were hemmed in for winter -- river and the old channel's oxbow lake having frozen solid. By now, we guessed we were not two ordinary river travelers...it must have been the river that was extraordinary: a marvel that protected us by the same mysterious action that had given a common horse wings and changed a woman into a laurel tree. ~ Norman Lock

Courts musn't interfere and separate families if they could help it. Said he'd druther not take a child away from its father. ~ Mark Twain

You may say what you want to, but in my opinion she had more sand in her than any girl I ever see; in my opinion she was just full of sand. ~ Mark Twain

Talking of appearances, I would like my future readers to know that the picture of Jim and me that Thomas Hart Benton painted on the wall of the Missouri state capitol bears not the slightest resemblance to either one of us. ... I've never been satisfied with any representation of myself and have seen only one picture of Jim that did him justice. I don't know why this should be, unless it is evidence of a nearly universal prejudice against us, instigated by Sunday school superintendents, Republicans, and bigots. ~ Norman Lock

I felt very good; I judged I had done it pretty neat
I reckoned Tom Sawyer couldn't a done it no neater himself. Of course he would a throwed more style into it, but I can't do that very handy, not being brung up with it. ~ Mark Twain

So, look, you can't leave," Doug said, sitting straight up and turning towards her. "if you do, Miller's gonna revert and Caleb and Ian are gonna ride roughshod and Sean'll go back to being ghost brother and Finn ... "
Megan's heart slipped. "Finn what?"
"Finn will be destroyed," Doug said, looking her in the eye. "You got that dude all up in a twist, you know that, right?"
"What does that even mean?" Megan asked.
"All's I know is, he found out you left and he locked himself in the shed and barricaded the door. No one's seen him since," Doug said. "When I bolted, Sean and Evan were trying to boost Caleb up onto the roof so he could look through the skylight and make sure the kid wasn't dead or something."
Megan swallowed hard. "Wow. ~ Kate Brian

I'll come back to you." "And you'll marry me ... " "In my heart I already have." "And you'll give us babies ... " "I can't wait to meet our children." "And you'll love me ... " "I never stopped, and I never will. ~ Elizabeth Finn

Inhaling deeply, Evan pressed his face to the soft tangle of Jamie's hair.
You had me at that first 'fuck you'. ~ Finn Marlowe

I lived an idyllic 'Huckleberry Finn' life in a tiny town. Climbing trees. Tagging after brothers. Happy. Barefoot on my pony. It was 'To Kill a Mockingbird'-esque. ~ Sissy Spacek

That's why you look so tired, isn't it?" I murmured. "You used up all your magic to find me last night."
Owen shrugged as though it was nothing. But it wasn't nothing to me. Besides Finn and the Deveraux sisters, I couldn't even remember the last time someone had cared enough to come looking for me when I was in trouble. I was so used to being on my own for so long, always being the tough, strong, capable one, that I'd forgotten how nice it felt to have someone else look out for me.
To have someone else care about me.
And just like that, the fragile strings of my feelings for Owen joined together, all the tangled threads wrapping around and weaving their way through my heart. Scary and painful in some ways, but necessary in others too. ~ Jennifer Estep

But Finn was like no one else. He could be funny, teasing, informative all at once. I was discovering that smart, engaged dialogue with a man is extremely erotic. Cleverness is an aphrodisiac. ~ Jane Lotter

Well, everybody does it that way, Huck."
"Tom, I am not everybody. ~ Mark Twain

Just thanking Miss Harlow for breakfast.' 'I'm offended, Finn. I made you dinner the other day and would've appreciated at the very least a sharp pat on the ass. I see how you are. ~ Christina Lauren

If I'm stuck, I'll sit down and read. That's a big thing. ~ Craig Finn

Information was like an aphrodisiac to Finn. Uncovering people's secrets an amusing game. ~ Jennifer Estep

It's so wrong when I pick up a new edition of Huckleberry Finn and I look at the last page and it doesn't say, Yours truly, at the end. ~ Leslie Fiedler

I went to an Arts High School, so everyone there was kind of anti-clique, though they still happened. I guess I was in the theatre-dork clique. Not to be confused with the musical-theatre-dork clique. ~ Finn Wittrock

They both fought to catch their breath, though Megan's oxygen deprivation had nothing to do with the game.
"You okay?" Finn asked.
"Yeah, you?" she replied. Every inch of her body was throbbing to touch him again.
"Yeah," he replied with a huge grin. He pushed himself around and got on all fours in front of her, pausing there with his face inches from hers. "I'm glad you stayed," he whispered, his breath warm on her face.
Megan somehow managed to reply. "Me too."
Then Finn pushed himself up and headed back toward the centre of the yard. For a moment, Megan couldn't move. Then Doug walked over and offered his arm. Megan grasped it thankfully and he yanked up to her shaky legs.
"Who's all in a twist now?" he asked with a smirk.
Megan laughed and shoved him from behind as they headed back to the line. ~ Kate Brian

People as a whole see a limited scope of the world, chained to their notions, often misguided notions, of what truth is. Seeking something more, I would argue, is the very act of unchaining oneself from the cave wall. ~ Elizabeth Finn

When people hit on feeling a certain melancholy or elation, it's a really exciting moment. I think making that connection is the goal, and what makes something great. ~ Craig Finn

A visionary company is like a great work of art. Think of Michelangelo's scenes from Genesis on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel or his statue of David. Think of a great and enduring novel like Huckleberry Finn or Crime and Punishment. Think of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony or Shakespeare's Henry V. Think of a beautifully designed building, like the masterpieces of Frank Lloyd Wright or Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. You can't point to any one single item that makes the whole thing work; it's the entire work - all the pieces working together to create an overall effect - that leads to enduring greatness. ~ John C. Maxwell

For you born writer, nothing is so healing as the realization that he has come upon the right word"
- Catherine Drinker Bowen ~ Yvonne Finn

That first night, as they admired how wide the sky stretched above and beyond them, how bright the stars were here, how they could actually see the haze of the Milky Way cut its swath across the sky, Finn lowered his eyes to hers, and she saw something there that she only then realized she hadn't seen from him before: hope. "Maybe nothing has to be as complicated as we make it," he said. "Maybe life really is this simple. ~ Jessica Strawser

Finn Mac Cumhaill," Teagan said, "I do love you."
"I'm taking this to mean we're not broken up, then. It was the fever speaking."
"No. It wasn't the fever. You want forever, and...I can't promise I won't change even more. But I'm going to take care of Fear Doirich before I do." She turned and started walking toward the old willow.
"Saying 'I love you' is no way to break up with a man!" Finn yelled behind her. ~ Kersten Hamilton

We are talking about preventing our students from reading Huckleberry Finn! And why? Because it offends some people. Show me a book that offends no one, and i will show you a book that no one, in the whole history of the world, has ever willingly read. ~ Nat Hentoff

The kiss has started something bigger between us, and the lies I'm telling Stirling will only get worse from here on in. ~ K.C. Finn

I was thinking how most people don't make you feel much of anything at all. Don't make you feel like time spent with them has grace, like every moment in their company is a gift. But Finn did. Finn, my midsummer night's dream. ~ Jane Lotter

It ain't no use to try to learn you nothing, Huck. ~ Mark Twain

This had to be Finn Dalton's mother. It simply had to be. From the moment Nash had given Carrie what seemed like the impossible assignment of interviewing Finn, she'd looked for out-of-the-box ways to locate him. Her mother's mention of work on the Alaskan pipeline and that many of those employed came from Washington State had led to a breakthrough. At least she hoped so. The search led Carrie to the birth record for a Finnegan Paul Dalton, not in Alaska but in her own birth state of Washington. That record revealed his mother's name - Joan Finnegan Dalton - which then led to a divorce decree, along with a license for a second marriage several years later. Tax records indicated that Joan, whose married name was now Reese, continued to reside in Washington State. Her hope was that Joan Dalton Reese would be willing to help Carrie find Finn. ~ Debbie Macomber

When the power of the shift rips the human body apart and transforms it into its new shape, there lives a second, less than a second, a mere shimmer of time when the mind is without a home, no body to call its own. Existence is painless in there, nothing but formlessness beyond understanding. A secret place, it contains nothing but the essence of self, a lost self. In the fire of pain, Colton found a whisper of that place, its ghost, its echo, and from that echo he withdrew a thread of deepest black. ~ Finn Marlowe

The tattoo is a reminder that choices made out of desperation are almost always bad choices." Finn paused, hoping Bonnie was thinking ~ Amy Harmon

If there's one thing I've learned in all my time working with children, if I could whittle those years down to a single revelation, it's this: They are extraordinarily resilient. They can withstand neglect; they can survive abuse; they can endure, even thrive, where adults would collapse like umbrellas. ~ A.J. Finn

Ryan Murphy, he basically tries to find something that's a pulse, a pressure point in our culture, and he grabs it, and he squeezes it. I think 'Freak Show' has a lot to do with the entertainment industry and the way we entertain ourselves: the objectification of people and the lengths we'll go for our own amusement. ~ Finn Wittrock

We're not a couple. I'm just inappropriately infatuated with her. ~ Elizabeth Finn

Honestly, I'm one of the ones who is least like my character, just because I like to make people laugh and have a good time-and be kind of fun and silly. Jake is very composed, has his guard up, and is a bit damaged. [But] Cory Monteith is pretty much like Finn. I think they both kind of have that goofy sense of humor. Cory is so hilarious in his everyday life, just like Finn is. ~ Jacob Artist

He glanced at Flat Finn, who was positioned in one corner of the room, facing the wall. "What is Flat Finn doing? If he's urinating on the floor, you're cleaning it up."
...
"Is he in trouble? He has to stand in the corner and think about what he's done? ~ Jessica Park

Maybe it was because I was raised in Appalachia, raised in faith and poverty and little else, but I believed in things like fate and destiny. I believed in angels, and I believed in God's ability to direct our paths, to guide us and move us in unseen ways, and I believed in miracles. Suddenly, Finn Clyde felt like a miracle, and I felt sure that Minnie had sent him to me. ~ Amy Harmon

Cormac smiled at her, but it was Finn who spoke. "Can I ask you a question?"
"Sure."
He leaned forward conspiratorially. "So, if I gave you some catnip would you act all weird and stoned?"
"I don't know. If I throw a stick, will you fetch?" She smiled sweetly at Cormac's cousin.
Burke made a choking noise, covering a laugh with his hand. Finn screwed up his face, as if in disgust. "Dude. I am NOT a dog."
"And I'm not a pampered house cat. ~ Jeanette Battista

Any chance of getting something sweet to go with my coffee?" [Finn] asked in a hopeful voice.
I arched an eyebrow at him. "You mean all those pieces of strawberry pie that you ate for lunch weren't enough?"
"I'm a growing boy," Finn said in a sincere tone. "I need my vitamins."
Bria snorted. "The only thing that's growing on you, Lane, is your ego."
Finn sidled up to my sister and gave her a dazzling smile. "Well, other things of mine also tend to swell up in your presence, detective. ~ Jennifer Estep