Samuel Clemens is one of my greatest heroes. I love his works, I admire the man for his stances, and I laugh at how often he deflated the self-important and lampooned the pompous.

Here is one of my favorite quotes of Mr. Twain’s, from the first volume of his Autobiography, published 100 years after his death (finally!):

“There is one notable thing about our Christianity: bad, bloody, merciless, money-grabbing, and predatory as it is–in our country particularly and in all other Christian countries in a somewhat modified degree–it is still a hundred times better than the Christianity of the Bible, with its prodigious crime–the invention of Hell. Measured by our Christianity of to-day, bad as it is, hypocritical as it is, empty and hollow as it is, neither the Deity nor his Son is a Christian, nor qualified for that moderately high place. Ours is a terrible religion. The fleets of the world could swim in spacious comfort in the innocent blood it has spilled.”

(The format of his official autobiography is a rambling collection of anecdotes and observations — my favorite form of reading.)