Latest Hal Holbrook Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• I don't play golf. Mark Twain is golf to me.

  Hal Holbrook

  Golf, Play, Mark

  "BWW Interviews: Hal Holbrook of MARK TWAIN TONIGHT, Coming to Riverside's Fox Performing Arts Center". Interview with Audrey Liebross, www.broadwayworld.com. January 12, 2015.

• 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?

  Hal Holbrook

  Men, Talking, Listening

  "BWW Interviews: Hal Holbrook of MARK TWAIN TONIGHT, Coming to Riverside's Fox Performing Arts Center". Interview with Audrey Liebross, www.broadwayworld.com. January 12, 2015.

• What are we going to do about the injuries to our country still going on right in front of our eyes? It gets me out of bed in the morning. It makes me mad enough to get my blood up and want to get out there with [Mark] Twain and get it said and that is why I still hit the road and go out on the stage and keep working at staying alive.

  Hal Holbrook

  Country, Morning, Eye

  "BWW Interviews: Hal Holbrook of MARK TWAIN TONIGHT, Coming to Riverside's Fox Performing Arts Center". Interview with Audrey Liebross, www.broadwayworld.com. January 12, 2015.

• 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.

  Hal Holbrook

  Years, People, Facts

  "BWW Interviews: Hal Holbrook of MARK TWAIN TONIGHT, Coming to Riverside's Fox Performing Arts Center". Interview with Audrey Liebross, www.broadwayworld.com. January 12, 2015.

• [Mark] Twain called Congress "the only distinctly native criminal class in America. We've lately sent a United States Senator to the penitentiary." That was a fact.

  Hal Holbrook

  Class, America, Criminals

  "BWW Interviews: Hal Holbrook of MARK TWAIN TONIGHT, Coming to Riverside's Fox Performing Arts Center". Interview with Audrey Liebross, www.broadwayworld.com. January 12, 2015.

• 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.

  Hal Holbrook

  Government, Lobbyists, Salary

  "BWW Interviews: Hal Holbrook of MARK TWAIN TONIGHT, Coming to Riverside's Fox Performing Arts Center". Interview with Audrey Liebross, www.broadwayworld.com. January 12, 2015.

• Why do I keep performing at my age? What else am I going to do? Play golf? I tried that years ago and all I did was cuss. I can do that without the walk, cuss at Congress and let [Mark]Twain do it. "Imagine that you were an idiot. And then imagine that you were a member of Congress. Wait - I've repeated myself."

  Hal Holbrook

  Golf, Years, Play

  "BWW Interviews: Hal Holbrook of MARK TWAIN TONIGHT, Coming to Riverside's Fox Performing Arts Center". Interview with Audrey Liebross, www.broadwayworld.com. January 12, 2015.

• I think I may drop dead on the stage someday. I hate to think of it. But it's getting tough on me, the travel. The show, I somehow manage to rise up to it, you know. But I have no desire to retire.

  Hal Holbrook

  Hate, Thinking, Desire

  "Holbrook's 'Mark Twain' show reaches 60th year". Interview with Brett Zongker, www.sandiegouniontribune.com. April 2, 2014.

• I've had a very full career in the theater, on stage, in films and on television.

  Hal Holbrook

  Careers, Television, Film

  "Holbrook's 'Mark Twain' show reaches 60th year". Interview with Brett Zongker, www.dailymail.co.uk. April 2, 2014.

• I never, ever update Mark Twain. I don't modernize it. I let the audience update the material. When I go out on stage, I'm trying to make the audience believe they're looking at this guy who died 104 years ago and listening to him and saying to themselves, "Jesus, he could be talking about today." And that's the point.

  Hal Holbrook

  Jesus, Believe, Talking

  "Holbrook’s ‘Mark Twain’ show reaches 60th year". Interview with Brett Zongker, www.seattletimes.com. April 3, 2014.

• I walked the streets of New York for two years begging for a job, and I couldn't get one.

  Hal Holbrook

  Jobs, New York, Years

  "Holbrook's 'Mark Twain' show reaches 60th year". Interview with Brett Zongker, www.sandiegouniontribune.com. April 2, 2014.

• I tended to lean toward character work. I love to disguise myself.

  Hal Holbrook

  Character, Disguise

  "Holbrook's 'Mark Twain' show reaches 60th year". Interview with Brett Zongker, www.dailymail.co.uk. April 2, 2014.

• Look, see, learn, become a citizen of Mankind, not just Hannibal, Missouri. That is the message of [Mark] Twain.

  Hal Holbrook

  Citizens, Looks, Messages

  "Hal Holbrook of MARK TWAIN TONIGHT, Coming to Riverside's Fox Performing Arts Center". Interview with Audrey Liebross, www.broadwayworld.com. Janary 12, 2015.

• 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.

  Hal Holbrook

  Jobs, War, Men

  "Hal Holbrook of MARK TWAIN TONIGHT, Coming to Riverside's Fox Performing Arts Center". Interview with Audrey Liebross, www.broadwayworld.com. January 12, 2015.

• The interesting scope of Mark Twain's development as a human being is that he grew. He saw, he travelled, he studied this country and later the world with the eye of a man educating himself. This is a central fact in the Mark Twain legacy. He became an American spokesman for the ideals of racial equality and dignity for the working man because he was willing to look the world in its face and see, really see what was happening to the people in it.

  Hal Holbrook

  Country, Eye, Men

  Source: www.broadwayworld.com

• Mark Twain married the daughter of one of New York State's leading Abolitionists, Jervis Langdon, who helped Frederick Douglass who became the great Negro leader to escape from slavery.

  Hal Holbrook

  Daughter, New York, Leader

  "Hal Holbrook of MARK TWAIN TONIGHT, Coming to Riverside's Fox Performing Arts Center". Interview with Audrey Liebross, www.broadwayworld.com. January 12, 2015.

• This is a deep and personal topic in our society today. Read the papers. America is hurting because of it. For God's sake, speak up. Don't we need to learn respect for people's feelings? What is going to school for? To learn how to add?

  Hal Holbrook

  Hurt, School, America

  "BWW Interviews: Hal Holbrook of MARK TWAIN TONIGHT, Coming to Riverside's Fox Performing Arts Center". Interview with Audrey Liebross, www.broadwayworld.com. January 12, 2015.

• 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.

  Hal Holbrook

  Iphone, Acting, Actors

  "Hal Holbrook of MARK TWAIN TONIGHT, Coming to Riverside's Fox Performing Arts Center". Interview with Audrey Liebross, www.broadwayworld.com. January 12, 2015.

• [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.

  Hal Holbrook

  Book, Years, Literature

  "BWW Interviews: Hal Holbrook of MARK TWAIN TONIGHT, Coming to Riverside's Fox Performing Arts Center". Interview with Audrey Liebross, www.broadwayworld.com. January 12, 2015.

• [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.

  Hal Holbrook

  Book, Thinking, Hands

  Source: www.broadwayworld.com

• Success is no longer content. It's how it sells.

  Hal Holbrook

  Sells

  "BWW Interviews: Hal Holbrook of MARK TWAIN TONIGHT, Coming to Riverside's Fox Performing Arts Center". Interview with Audrey Liebross, www.broadwayworld.com. January 12, 2015.