Mark Twain’s Idea of Love

Yesterday, Aug. 29, I went to see Val Kilmer at the Pasadena Playhouse in his role as Mark Twain and I felt he did a bad job.  Val had no character, no personality, no resonance; therefore, he couldn’t play the role of Mark Twain well.  To cover up his deficit in acting skills, he spent his time trying to be funny doing dumb things to make people laugh.  And believe me, many people fell for the trick and laughed.  He mentioned Mark Twain’s idea of love, but when our party left, we still had no idea what Mark Twain’s idea of love was because Val Kilmer did a poor job stating it.  Here’s the real thing coming from Mark Twain’s mouth:

Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths.  No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.  Mark Twain’s Notebook

After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her.  Adam’s Diary

Love is not a product of reasoning and statistics.  It just comes–none knows whence–and cannot explain itself.  Eve’s Diary

Love is madness; if thwarted it develops fast.  – “The Memorable Assassination”

The frankest and freest product of the human mind and heart is a love letter; the writer gets his limitless freedom of statement and expression from his sense that no stranger is going to see what he is writing.  Mark Twain’s Autobiography, 1959 preface

When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain.  Notebook, 1808

True love is the only heart disease that is best left to “run on”–the only affection of the heart for which there is no help, and none desired.  Mark Twain’s Notebook

The course of free love never runs smooth.  I suppose we have all tried it.  Notebook, 1904

And I leave you with my own love quotation:

Love is the feeling of living in limitless time in a euphoric cocoon of the senses.  M. Adams