Who Really Said What

[From article]
The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one. ~ Mark Twain
I got that quote from Jon Winokur's Advice to Writers page. It is indeed great advice for writers. However, I'm pretty sure that it was not written or said by Mark Twain.
Longtime readers know that I have a minor interest in investigating fake quotes and documents, and a decent spidey sense for catching them.
[. . .]
Fake quotes get created in many ways. There are deliberate frauds and satires,
[. . .]
They read as if they were written from the CNN green room, rather than an entirely different time and place. And they don't seem to have had any existence on the Internet before the crises to which they so apply so aptly.
[. . .]
As I once joked to a friend: "In the future, all funny things will be said by Winston Churchill, Oscar Wilde or Mark Twain."
[. . .]
fake quotes are often better than the things famous people actually said. We want to think that the great minds of the past can speak to our problems today -- and of course, they can. But fake quotes actually often speak much better than real ones. They are either engineered to be touchingly on point and timely, or they are heir to a real quote, evolved to be more congenial, well-phrased and morally admirable. It's hard for the real stuff to compete.

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-05-18/a-guide-to-fake-quotes-on-the-internet

Great Quote. A Little Too Great.
MAY 18, 2015 2:15 PM EDT
By Megan McArdle