It's What My Publicist Told Me to Say! Quiz

Answer: Mark Twain

The quote was given as a graduation speech in 1882 and was typical of Twain's profundity: On initial reading, it appears to be sage advice, but it is highly sarcastic and was typical of Twain to advocate for non-conformity as a necessary trait in youth.

Samuel Clemens was born in Florida, Missouri. One of seven siblings, but only one of four who reached adulthood, he moved to the Mississippi port town of Hannibal when he was four. This location provided him with the inspiration for his two most famous characters: Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. His father, a lawyer, died when he was 11, and he left school soon after and became an apprentice printer. Working in this trade, he worked in New York City, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Cincinnati, and spent his evenings in these cities educating himself in public libraries. However, he dreamed of becoming a river pilot, which he believed was more prestigious than being a steamboat captain. He was taken on as an apprentice pilot and for two years learned the vagaries of the Mississippi between New Orleans and St Louis. It was his trade as a pilot that gave him his pen name "mark twain", which was the leadsman's shout for a measured river depth of two fathoms (12 feet), which was a safe depth for a steamboat.

This question was submitted by Phoenix Rising team member 1nn1.

Answer: Mark Twain

Twain's first celebrated work was the short story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", originally published in the New York Saturday Press in 1865 as "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog". It was based on a tale he had heard while working in California as a miner. Twain's most famous works ("The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", "Huckleberry Finn", etc.) were written after he had settled in Hartford, Connecticut with his wife Olivia ("Livy"). Throughout his career he made the acquaintance of many luminaries of the times - in California, it was Bret Harte who encouraged his writing; later he was friends with Nikola Tesla and built a home next door to Harriet Beecher Stowe. Although a revered humorist, he was not as gifted with money, and declared bankruptcy late in the 19th century after investing greatly in some failed inventions. It was this penury that led him to a worldwide speaking tour, which was in part chronicled in the non-fiction "Following the Equator". This book had chapter epigraphs attributed to "Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar"; our quote adorns the heading of Chapter 27 which otherwise recounts the extermination of the native population of Tasmania. Much of the book is social commentary, although some short fiction is interspersed within.

Another epigraph from the book: "It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress."

Player pusdoc chuckled throughout the writing of this question for Phoenix Rising's Global Tour.

Answer: Mark Twain

Mark Twain published "The Innocents Abroad" in 1869, about 7 years before releasing "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", when the author was 34 years old. The full quote is "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things can not be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime." The book was a diary account of Twain's tour of Europe and the Holy Land on an old Civil War ship called "Quaker City". Being open to new experiences and new cultures provides richness in life and probably had a huge impact on Twain's writings, especially "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn".

In his final years, Mark Twain lived in Manhattan, New York. The last 10 years of his life were filled with sorrow as his daughter, wife, and several friends died in a short span. The year before his death he commented that he was born in 1835, the year of Haley's Comet passing, and he would likely die when the comet passed again in 1910. He said, "The Almighty has said, no doubt: 'Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together'." On April 21, 1910, Twain suffered a heart attack and passed on. Thankfully, for all of us, his words have not.

This question was discovered while traveling by ship by Phoenix Rising's BigTriviaDawg twelve feet below the water line.

Answer: Oscar Wilde

This pithy statement comes from the pen of Oscar Wilde, via his play 'The Importance of Being Earnest'. The play is a satire of the strict moral uprightness associated with Victorian society. It is essentially a comedy driven by a series of farcical incidents that arise because the main protagonist, Jack Worthing, created a fictional brother (named Ernest) to allow him to live a double life as both an upstanding and serious gentleman in the country and as a fun-seeking man of little responsibility in London.

The quote itself is spoken by Algernon Moncrieff in response to Jack's explanation of his complicated lifestyle, which he ends by telling Algernon that he has told him "the whole truth pure and simple" - a statement that Algernon obviously refutes! However, Algernon clearly doesn't disapprove as he continues the line by adding: "modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!"

Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854 and came from a literary background. His father authored various non-fiction works about Ireland and its people, while his mother Jane published Irish nationalist poetry. His maternal great-uncle, Charles Maturin, was also a novelist and playwright.

The truth of this information was established by Phoenix Rising's Fifiona81.

Answer: Oscar Wilde

"Lady Windermere's Fan" was the fourth play Wilde wrote, and was wildly successful when staged in 1892, earning him a substantial sum of money. The quote is spoken in Act 1 by Lord Darlington, who is besotted with Lady Windermere and almost leads her to ruin. Wilde was a literary polymath, publishing poetry, plays, journalism, essays, short fiction, a letter recounting his spiritual journey ("De Profundis") and his single novel, "The Picture of Dorian Gray". His initial plays were of a more serious tone; "Lady Windermere's Fan' was the first of his "society comedies", later followed by "An Ideal Husband" and "The Importance of Being Earnest". His later career was marred by the scandal of his arrest and imprisonment occasioned by his feud with the Marquess of Queensberry, the father of Wilde's presumed lover, Lord Alfred Douglas.

Player pusdoc hopes the Phoenix Rising team will visit Lake Windermere on the Global Tour.

Answer: Oscar Wilde

The evidence that Oscar Wilde said this quotation is quite weak. Nevertheless, it is often attributed to him as it appears to fit Wilde's reputation for arrogance. Supposedly it was stated to a US customs official when Wilde entered the US, yet the first citation of the quote did not appear until 1910, some 18 years later and a decade after his death.

Wilde was at the peak of his success in the mid-1890s when "An Ideal Husband" (1895) and "The Importance of Being Earnest" (1895) were performing in London. However, a civil writ raised by Wilde against John Douglas, the 9th Marquess of Queensberry, for criminal libel backfired and led to Wilde being arrested and charged with gross indecency with men. He served two years with hard labour in prison, then travelled to France on the day of his release never to return to Great Britain or Ireland. In France in 1898 he wrote his last work, "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" (1898). He died of meningitis in 1900 aged 46.

This question was written by Phoenix Rising team member 1nn1.

Answer: Terry Pratchett

Released in 2010, 'I Shall Wear Midnight' is the fourth novel in the five-book Tiffany Aching children's series by English writer Terry Pratchett. It is a comic fantasy novel, part of the Discworld pantheon, and is based on the character of fifteen year old Tiffany Aching, who is tasked with finding the source of unrest that is fomenting fear, spawning dark thoughts and angry muttering in her neighbourhood. True to the quote, Tiffany's life philosophy is to love everyone despite their faults (however many). Discovering that the evil and malevolent (spoiler alert!) Cunning Man is the cause of the discord amongst the witch population, she ruthlessly dispatches him and restores the balance in her world. In the USA, it won the Andre Norton Nebula Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction.

Pratchett began writing as a young teenager and had his first commercial publication at the age of 15. He followed his love of English, history and art into journalism, and as a journalist, interviewed Peter Bander van Duren, from a small publishing company, in 1968. Mentioning that he had written a manuscript led to the company, Colin Smythe Ltd, publishing the book called 'The Carpet People' in 1971. 'The Colour of Magic', the first of his Discworld novels, was published in hardback by the same company in 1983.

Question provided by VegemiteKid of Phoenix Rising.

Answer: Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett's fourth Disc World novel, "Mort", is often described as the best place to start reading his work. Mort starts life as a normal boy who becomes an apprentice to Death, the Grim Reaper himself! Arguably one of the greatest characters ever created, Death has a genuine desire to understand humans - feelings, and all - but he just can't. After millennia of being there at the moment of death, he decides he needs some time off. So Mort is brought to live in an extra-dimensional castle with the Reaper...and his human daughter, Ysabell.

As for our full quote, "He'd been wrong, there was a light at the end of the tunnel, and it was a flamethrower." Mort had just successfully not owned up to Death about a bad choice he made when the Reaper brings up the topic of Ysabell and how it would be wonderful if Mort became closer to her. Meanwhile, Ysabell had already threatened Mort's life if he got anywhere near her!

Of course, the quote relates to real life by poking a bit of fun at people's feelings about what happens upon death. Many people who have died before resuscitation have described there being a tunnel with a wonderful light at the end of it. So, Pratchett is teasing that indeed those who disregard the possibility may indeed find a flamethrower instead...or not.

This question was found in the dark by Phoenix Rising's BigTriviaDawg, who can't help but laugh out loud when reading Disc World novels.

Answer: Terry Pratchett

Despite the fact that I've never read any of Terry Pratchett's works, I fell over myself when I saw this quote and simply went "Wow". The very idea that "there's nothing there", I mean, absolutely nothing, and then, suddenly... it explodes. Shades of the Big Bang? Maybe. But it does open up the imagination to a string of possibilities. My first thought was... ideas. Where do they come from? It almost seems like they are a little piece of nothing and then, they explode in your mind, into something that is now tangible. Or, is it tangible while it's still in your mind? Does it have to be expressed for it to be tangible?

Even the image of nothing exploding becomes an idea. What does nothing become when it explodes? Is there shrapnel? Does it blossom out like a flower? Is that entire explosion representative of a whole new universe or, is every piece of shrapnel another universe in its own right? Because they come from the same piece of nothing, are they parallel universes? Have we created a multiverse... far out man!

I will leave that behind now as it is starting to sound like a piece of philosophy (just call me Aristotle). I decided to track down the synopsis of the novel to see where this quote may possibly appear and in what context it was used. I didn't quite find out, but the novel in which it appears, "Lords and Ladies" (1992), which is the 14th in Pratchett's "Discworld" series, deals with (and this made me laugh) witches battling with elves that live in a parallel universe.

Pratchett led a full life with numerous interests and causes catching his attention. A progressive thinker, he immediately adopted the computer, when it became available, as a means to write with. He maintained a fondness for video games, particularly those that he felt were "intelligent", he was an avid fan of natural history and maintained a greenhouse full of carnivorous plants. In 2007 he was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's disease, which would eventually become the backbone of his passing in 2014. However, among the many awards and honours he was presented with in his lifetime, he survived long enough to witness an asteroid being named after him - 127005pratchett.

This question was written by Phoenix Rising's pollucci19 who, after this, is feeling inspired to read a Pratchett novel.

Answer: Douglas Adams

"Don't Panic" has become a well-worn tribute to Douglas Adams and his "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", including the name given to the biography of Douglas Adams written by Neil Gaiman. It was referenced by Coldplay in their debut album 'Parachutes', and on Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster as it was transported into space by the Falcon Heavy rocket; it had "DON'T PANIC!" written on the screen of its dashboard.

The whimsical novel "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", the end of an idea that Douglas Adams had in a field in Innsbruck in 1971, says in the foreword that the electronic travel guide has two things going for it that outclass the previous 'Encyclopaedia Galactica'; it is both slightly cheaper, and "has the words DON'T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover." The book tells us that 'The Guide' resembled a largish electronic calculator which looked "insanely complicated" against which the phrase 'Don't panic' provided reassurance.

Douglas Adams was born in Cambridge, England, on 11 March 1952. His parents separated when he was five years old, and he moved with his sister and mother to live with his mother's parents in Brentwood, Essex, where they ran an RSPCA animal shelter. At the local primary school and later the Brentwood School, he showed a proclivity for writing that was recognised by one master, Frank Halford, who awarded Adams ten out of ten for creative writing (the only student to ever attain honour). He achieved an Exhibition in English at St John's College, Cambridge at the age of 19 and later joined the likes of John Cleese and Hugh Laurie in the Footlights club.

Question provided by VegemiteKid of Phoenix Rising.

Answer: Douglas Adams

Douglas Adam's first full-length novel, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", is full of witty quotes. The quote "Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so!" comes early in the book before Arthur Dent realizes his friend Ford Prefect is an alien. Unlike Arthur, Ford knows the Earth will be vaporized in 15 minutes and he wants to escape with Arthur before it does. Apparently, three pints of beer are needed for this escape plan which Arthur believes is a shocking amount of alcohol at lunchtime.

The true beauty of the quote rests in its profoundness. In reality, time is based on our perception. It can feel fast at times and slow at others and physicists might argue it is purely an illusion or trick of the brain. So "Time is an illusion" is a profound statement...followed by "Lunchtime doubly so" being arbitrary as "lunch" is a made-up time by people. So in a sense, they are a double illusion! Meanwhile, Arthur is being cajoled to finish his pints quickly!

Douglas Adams had a meandering career after finishing university. He started with grand visions of being a writer of radio and TV scripts but his writing style was not appreciated at the time. He is one of two non-Pythons to have a writing credit with "The Flying Circus", after forming a friendship with Graham Chapman. Unfortunately, his career stalled barely before it had begun, and he found himself living with his mum. A few years later he caught a break and started writing content for the TV series "Doctor Who". Upon a European trip, while star gazing, the idea for "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" came to him. The story was first released as a BBC radio series. Upon success, he wrote it down as the book. He went on to write four more novels for his Hitchhiker's Universe.

BigTriviaDawg of Phoenix Rising waved down this question with his towel and translated it with the aid of his Babel fish!

Answer: Douglas Adams

This line appears in chapter six of the second book in the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" trilogy (that comes in five parts), "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe" (1980). In the passage, a rather frazzled receptionist, who doesn't tolerate fools, at Megadodo Publications (the home of the Guide) is explaining to a complainant that the Guide is indispensable to those trying to make sense of this complex universe and that, if the Guide has any inaccuracies, then rest assured that those are definitively inaccurate. However, should there be a major discrepancy, on those occasions, it is a case of reality getting it all wrong. A court case is then cited where a sentence in the Guide (which had led to a death) containing an inaccuracy was there because it was more aesthetically pleasing than the truth. On behalf of the Guide, a poet testified under oath that beauty was truth... the judge concurred and deemed that Life, itself, was at fault because it was neither beautiful nor true.

In his personal life, Adams lived in Islington and had a relationship with the novelist Sally Emerson, to whom he'd dedicated his book "Life, the Universe and Everything" (1982). He would then have a relationship with the barrister Jane Belson. The pair moved to Los Angeles in 1983 while Adams worked on a script for a movie version of "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", that failed to eventuate. They would return to London and marry in 1991, before welcoming the arrival of their daughter, Polly Jane Rocket Adams in 1994. The family moved to California in 1999. Adams suffered a fatal heart attack in 2001. The asteroid 25924Douglasadams was named in his honour in 2005.

This question was written by Phoenix Rising's pollucci19 whose reality is generally infrequent.