“I have been an author for 20 years and an ass for 55.”

“When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Cincinnati because it's always 20 years behind the times.”

“The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become until he goes abroad. I speak now, of course, in the supposition that the gentle reader has not been abroad, and therefore is not already a consummate ass. If the case be otherwise, I beg his pardon and extend to him the cordial hand of fellowship and call him brother. I shall always delight to meet an ass after my own heart when I have finished my travels.”

“I think we never become really and genuinely our entire and honest selves until we are dead--and not then until we have been dead years and years. People ought to start dead, and then they would be honest so much earlier.”

“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”

“All the first years, their only question had been -- asked with beseechings and tears that might have moved stone, in time, perhaps, but hearts are not stones: "Is he alive?" "Is she alive?”

“I was sorry to have my name mentioned as one of the great authors, because they have a sad habit of dying off. Chaucer is dead, Spencer is dead, so is Milton, so is Shakespeare, and I’m not feeling so well myself.”