Gertrude Stein

History takes time. History makes memory.

— Gertrude Stein

A real failure does not need an excuse. It is an end in itself.

— Gertrude Stein

Money is always there but the pockets change; it is not in the same pockets after a change, and that is all there is to say about money.

— Gertrude Stein

From the very nature of progress, all ages must be transitional. If they were not, the world would be at a stand-still and death would speedily ensue. It is one of the tamest of platitudes but it is always introduced by a flourish of trumpets.

— Gertrude Stein

Argument is to me the air I breathe. Given any proposition, I cannot help believing the other side and defending it.

— Gertrude Stein

The whole duty of man consists in being reasonable and just... I am reasonable because I know the difference between understanding and not understanding and I am just because I have no opinion about things I don’t understand.

— Gertrude Stein

A beauty is not suddenly in a circle. It comes with rapture. A great deal of beauty is rapture. A circle is a necessity. Otherwise you would see no one. We each have our circle.

— Gertrude Stein

It is always a mistake to be plain-spoken.

— Gertrude Stein

No sense in no sense innocence of what of not and what of delight. In no sense innocence in no sense and what in delight and not, in no sense innocence in no sense no sense what, in no sense and delight, and in no sense and delight and not in no sense and delight and not, no sense in no sense innocence and delight.

— Gertrude Stein

Let me recite what history teaches. History teaches.

— Gertrude Stein

One does not get better but different and older and that is always a pleasure.

— Gertrude Stein

Before the flowers of friendship faded friendship faded.

— Gertrude Stein

All of you young people who served in the war. You are a lost generation... You have no respect for anything. You drink yourselves to death.

— Gertrude Stein

When I sleep I sleep and do not dream because it is as well that I am what I seem when I am in my bed and dream.

— Gertrude Stein

Let me listen to me and not to them In union there is strength.

— Gertrude Stein

It is awfully important to know what is and what is not your business.

— Gertrude Stein

It is extraordinary that when you are acquainted with a whole family you can forget about them.

— Gertrude Stein

The deepest thing in any one is the conviction of the bad luck that follows boasting.

— Gertrude Stein

All the world knows how to cry but not all the world knows how to sigh. Sighing is extra.

— Gertrude Stein

I just tell you and though I dont sound like it I've got plenty of sense, there aint any answer, there aint going to be any answer, there never has been any answer, that’s the answer.

— Gertrude Stein

Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.

— Gertrude Stein

We are always the same age inside.

— Gertrude Stein

Do you know because I tell you so, or do you know, do you know.

— Gertrude Stein

Ladies there is no neutral position for us to assume.

— Gertrude Stein

Communists are people who fancied that they had an unhappy childhood.

— Gertrude Stein

What is the answer?" [ I was silent ] "In that case, what is the question?

— Gertrude Stein

It bothers a lot of people, but like you said, it's nobody's business, it came from the Judeo-Christian ethos, especially Saint Paul the bastard, but he was complaining about youngsters who were not really that way, they did it for money, everybody suspects us or knows but nobody says anything about it.

— Gertrude Stein

A writer must always try to have a philosophy and he should also have a psychology and a philology and many other things. Without a philosophy and a psychology and all these various other things he is not really worthy of being called a writer. I agree with Kant and Schopenhauer and Plato and Spinoza and that is quite enough to be called a philosophy. But then of course a philosophy is not the same thing as a style.

— Gertrude Stein

Human nature, human nature acts as it acts when it is identified when there is an identity but it is not human nature that has anything to do with that it is that anybody is there where they are, it is that that has to do with identity, with government and propaganda with history with individualism and with communism but it has nothing nothing to do with the human mind … because the human mind writes what there is and what has identity go to do with that … nothing at all.

— Gertrude Stein

They were regular in being gay, they learned little things that are things in being gay, they learned many little things that are things in being gay, they were gay every day, they were regular, they were gay, they were gay the same length of time every day, they were gay, they were quite regularly gay.

— Gertrude Stein

Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.

— Gertrude Stein

I am writing for myself and strangers. This is the only way that I can do it. Everybody is a real one to me, everybody is like some one else too to me. No one of them that I know can want to know it and so I write for myself and strangers.

— Gertrude Stein

A FEATHER.

— Gertrude Stein

Disillusionment in living is finding that no one can really ever be agreeing with you completely in anything.

— Gertrude Stein

Repeating then is in every one, in every one their being and their feeling and their way of realizing everything and every one comes out of them in repeating. More and more then every one comes to be clear to some one.

— Gertrude Stein

It is hard living down the tempers we are born with. We all begin well, for in our youth there is nothing we are more intolerant of than our own sins writ large in others and we fight them fiercely in ourselves; but we grow old and we see that these our sins are of all sins the really harmless ones to own, nay that they give a charm to any character, and so our struggle with them dies away.

— Gertrude Stein

The creator of the new composition in the arts is an outlaw until he is a classic.

— Gertrude Stein

No one is ahead of his time, it is only that the particular variety of creating his time is the one that his contemporaries who are also creating their own time refuse to accept... For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling.

— Gertrude Stein

Romance is everything.

— Gertrude Stein

Suppose no one asked a question, what would be the answer.

— Gertrude Stein

You will write if you will write without thinking of the result in terms of a result, but think of the writing in terms of discovery, which is to say that creation must take place

— Gertrude Stein

To know to know to love her so. Four saints prepare for saints.

— Gertrude Stein

A saint is one to be for two when three and you make five and two and cover. Saint saint a saint.

— Gertrude Stein

A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears.

— Gertrude Stein

Pigeons on the grass alas.Pigeons large pigeons on the shorter longer yellow grass alas pigeons on the grass.

— Gertrude Stein

I like a view but I like to sit with my back turned to it.

— Gertrude Stein

Remarks are not literature.

— Gertrude Stein

A real failure does not need an excuse. It is an end in itself.

— Gertrude Stein

Clarity is of no importance because nobody listens and nobody knows what you mean no matter what you mean, nor how clearly you mean what you mean. But if you have vitality enough of knowing enough of what you mean, somebody and sometime and sometimes a great many will have to realize that you know what you mean and so they will agree that you mean what you know, what you know you mean, which is as near as anybody can come to understanding any one.

— Gertrude Stein

When I said. "A rose is a rose is a rose." And then later made that into a ring I made poetry and what did I do? I caressed completely caressed and addressed a noun.

— Gertrude Stein

A master-piece … may be unwelcome but it is never dull.

— Gertrude Stein

If you do not remember while you are writing, it may seem confused to others but actually it is clear and eventually that clarity will be clear, that is what a master-piece is, but if you remember while you are writing it will seem clear at the time to any one but the clarity will go out of it that is what a master-piece is not.

— Gertrude Stein

Nothing could bother me more than the way a thing goes dead once it has been said.

— Gertrude Stein

Picasso once remarked I do not care who it is that has or does influence me as long as it is not myself.

— Gertrude Stein

When you are writing before there is an audience anything written is as important as any other thing and you cherish anything and everything that you have written. After the audience begins, naturally they create something that is they create you, and so not everything is so important, something is more important than another thing.

— Gertrude Stein

The difference between a thinker and a newspaperman is that a thinker enters right into things, a newspaperman is superficial.

— Gertrude Stein

I like a thing simple but it must be simple through complication. Everything must come into your scheme, otherwise you cannot achieve real simplicity.

— Gertrude Stein

Human beings are interested in two things. They are interested in the reality and interested in telling about it.

— Gertrude Stein

A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears.

— Gertrude Stein

I have always noticed that in portraits of really great writers the mouth is always firmly closed.

— Gertrude Stein

In the United States there is more space where nobody is than where anybody is. This is what makes America what it is.

— Gertrude Stein

Growing has no connection with audience. A universe has no connection with human nature.

— Gertrude Stein

It is not what France gave you but what it did not take from you that was important.

— Gertrude Stein

Adventure is making the distant approach nearer but romance is having what is where it is which is not where you are stay where it is.

— Gertrude Stein

America is my country and Paris is my home town and it is as it has come to be.

— Gertrude Stein

And so I am an American and I have lived half my life in Paris, not the half that made me but the half in which I made what I made.

— Gertrude Stein

Everybody knows if you are too careful you are so occupied in being careful that you are sure to stumble over something.

— Gertrude Stein

As there was never any question there was never any answer.

— Gertrude Stein

Before one is successful that is before any one is ready to pay money for anything you do then you are certain that every word you have written is an important word to have written and that any word you have written is as important as any other word and you keep everything you have written with great care.

— Gertrude Stein

If anything is a surprise then there is not much difference between older and younger because the only thing that does make anybody older is that they cannot be surprised.

— Gertrude Stein

Suddenly it was all different, what I did had a value that made people ready to pay, up to that time everything I did had a value because nobody was ready to pay. It is funny about money. And it is funny about identity. You are you because your little dog knows you, but when your public knows you and does not want to pay for you and when your public knows you and does want to pay for you, you are not the same you.

— Gertrude Stein

It always did bother me that the American public were more interested in me than in my work. And after all there is no sense in it because if it were not for my work they would not be interested in me so why should they not be more interested in my work than in me. That is one of the things one has to worry about in America.

— Gertrude Stein

Anything scares me, anything scares anyone but really after all considering how dangerous everything is nothing is really very frightening.

— Gertrude Stein

The earth is the earth as a peasant sees it, the world is the world as a duchess sees it, and anyway a duchess would be nothing if the earth was not there as the peasant tills it.

— Gertrude Stein

The two things most men are proudest of is the thing that any man can do and doing does in the same way, that is being drunk and being the father of their son.

— Gertrude Stein

And identity is funny being yourself is funny as you are never yourself to yourself except as you remember yourself and then of course you do not believe yourself.

— Gertrude Stein

It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.

— Gertrude Stein

Would I if I could by pushing a button would I kill five thousand Chinamen if I could save my brother from anything. Well I was very fond of my brother and I could completely imagine his suffering and I replied that five thousand Chinamen were something I could not imagine and so it was not interesting. One has to remember that about imagination, that is when the world gets dull when everybody does not know what they can or what they cannot really imagine.

— Gertrude Stein

The minute you or anybody else knows what you are you are not it, you are what you or anybody else knows you are and as everything in living is made up of finding out what you are it is extraordinarily difficult really not to know what you are and yet to be that thing.

— Gertrude Stein

Everybody thinks that this civilization has lasted a very long time but it really does take very few grandfathers’ granddaughters to take us back to the dark ages.

— Gertrude Stein

I rarely believe anything, because at the time of believing I am not really there to believe.

— Gertrude Stein

A saint a real saint never does anything, a martyr does something but a really good saint does nothing, and so I wanted to have Four Saints who did nothing and I wrote the Four Saints In Three Acts and they did nothing and that was everything. Generally speaking anybody is more interesting doing nothing than doing something.

— Gertrude Stein

If the stars are suns and the earth is the earth and there are men only upon this earth and anything can put an end to anything and any dog does anything like anybody does it what is the difference between eternity and anything.

— Gertrude Stein

I was talking like this to the Princeton professor and he said well if these are the facts there is no hope and I said well what is hope hope is just contact with the facts.

— Gertrude Stein

Counting is the religion of this generation it is its hope and its salvation.

— Gertrude Stein

I do want to get rich but I never want to do what there is to do to get rich.

— Gertrude Stein

It is a difficult thing to like anybody else's ideas of being funny.

— Gertrude Stein

I love my love with a b because she is peculiar.

— Gertrude Stein

Explanations are clear but since no one to whom a thing is explained can connect the explanations with what is really clear, therefore clear explanations are not clear. Now this is a simple thing that anybody who has ever argued or quarreled knows perfectly well is a simple thing, only when they read it they do not understand it because they do not see that understanding and believing are not the same thing.

— Gertrude Stein

I dislike it when instead of saying Jew they say Hebrew or Israelite, or Semite, I do not like it and why should a Negro want to be called colored. Why should we want to lose being a Negro... I have stated that a noun to me is a stupid thing, if you know a thing and its name why bother about it but you have to know its name to talk about it. Well its name is Negro if it is a Negro and Jew if it is a Jew and both of them are nice strong names and so let us keep them.

— Gertrude Stein

Since it could be done what was the use of doing it, and anyway you always have to stop doing something sometime.

— Gertrude Stein

Alice Toklas' father had almost once had an oil well they dug and dug but naturally the oil did not gush, naturally not these things never do happen to any one one knows, if it could happen to them you would not be very likely to know them most naturally not.

— Gertrude Stein

The head-lines which do not head anything they simply replace something but they do not make anything.

— Gertrude Stein

Perhaps I am not I even if my little dog knows me but anyway I like what I have and now it is today.

— Gertrude Stein

The surrealists still see things as everyone sees them, they complicate them in a different way but the vision is that of everyone else, in short the complication is the complication of the twentieth century but the vision is that of the nineteenth century. Picasso only sees something else, another reality. Complications are always easy but another vision than that of all the world is very rare.

— Gertrude Stein

After all, everybody, that is, everybody who writes is interested in living inside themselves in order to tell what is inside themselves. That is why writers have to have two countries, the one where they belong and the one in which they live really. The second one is romantic, it is separate from themselves, it is not real but it is really there.

— Gertrude Stein

The reason why all of us naturally began to live in France is because France has scientific methods, machines and electricity, but does not really believe that these things have anything to do with the real business of living.

— Gertrude Stein

The thing that differentiates man from animals is money.

— Gertrude Stein

There is no pulse so sure of the state of a nation as its characteristic art product which has nothing to do with its material life.

— Gertrude Stein

But now well democracy has shown us that what is evil are the grosses têtes, the big heads, all big heads are greedy for money and power, they are ambitious that is the reason they are big heads and so they are at the head of the government and the result is misery for the people. They talk about cutting off the heads of the grosses têtes but now we know that there will be other grosses têtes and the will be all the same.

— Gertrude Stein

We are always the same age inside.

— Gertrude Stein

Propaganda is not French, it is not civilized to want other people to believe what you believe because the essence of being civilised is to possess yourself as you are, and if you possess yourself as you are you of course cannot possess any one else, it is not your business.

— Gertrude Stein

The family is always the family but during vacations it is an extended family and that is exhausting

— Gertrude Stein

After all, human beings are like that. When they are alone they want to be with others, and when they are with others they want to be alone.

— Gertrude Stein

One of the pleasant things those of us who write or paint do is to have the daily miracle. It does come.

— Gertrude Stein

Politeness does not interfere with facts, politeness is just another fact.

— Gertrude Stein

It often makes me know that as a cousin of mine once said about money, money is always there but the pockets change; it is not in the same pockets after a change, and that is all there is to say about money.

— Gertrude Stein

A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears.

— Gertrude Stein

A nice war is a war where everybody who is heroic is a hero, and everybody more or less is a hero in a nice war. Now this war is not at all a nice war.

— Gertrude Stein

Is it worse to be scared than to be bored, that is the question.

— Gertrude Stein

It is the soothing thing about history that it does repeat itself.

— Gertrude Stein

War is never fatal but always lost. Always lost.

— Gertrude Stein

Even the propagandists on the radio find it very difficult to really say let alone believe that the world will be a happy place, of love and peace and plenty, and that the lion will lie down with the lamb and everybody will believe anybody.

— Gertrude Stein

The idea of enemies is awful it makes one stop remembering eternity and the fear of death. That is what enemies are. Possessions are the same as enemies only less so, they too make one forget eternity and the fear of death.

— Gertrude Stein

It is funny that men who are supposed to be scientific cannot get themselves to realize the basic principle of physics, that action and reaction are equal and opposite, that when you persecute people you always rouse them to be strong and stronger.

— Gertrude Stein

The nineteenth century believed in science but the twentieth century does not.

— Gertrude Stein

The thing that is most interesting about government servants is that they believe what they are supposed to believe, they really do believe what they are supposed to believe.

— Gertrude Stein

Now they can do the radio in so many languages that nobody any longer dreams of a single language, and there should not any longer be dreams of conquest because the globe is all one, anybody can hear everything and everybody can hear the same thing, so what is the use of conquering.

— Gertrude Stein

One of the things that is most striking about the young generation is that they never talk about their own futures, there are no futures for this generation, not any of them and so naturally they never think of them. It is very striking, they do not live in the present they just live, as well as they can, and they do not plan. It is extraordinary that whole populations have no projects for a future, none at all. It certainly is extraordinary, but it is certainly true.

— Gertrude Stein

A vegetable garden in the beginning looks so promising and then after all little by little it grows nothing but vegetables, nothing, nothing but vegetables.

— Gertrude Stein

I don’t envisage collectivism. There is no such animal, it is always individualism, sometimes the rest vote and sometimes they do not, and if they do they do and if they do not they do not.

— Gertrude Stein

A novel is what you dream in your night sleep. A novel is not waking thoughts although it is written and thought with waking thoughts. But really a novel goes as dreams go in sleeping at night and some dreams are like anything and some dreams are like something and some dreams change and some dreams are quiet and some dreams are not. And some dreams are just what any one would do only a little different always just a little different and that is what a novel is.

— Gertrude Stein

The contemporary thing in art and literature is the thing which doesn't make enough difference to the people of that generation so that they can accept it or reject it.

— Gertrude Stein

Americans are very friendly and very suspicious, that is what Americans are and that is what always upsets the foreigner, who deals with them, they are so friendly how can they be so suspicious and they are so suspicious how can they be so friendly but they just are.

— Gertrude Stein

Writers only think they are interested in politics, they are not really, it gives them a chance to talk and writers like to talk but really no real writer is really interested in politics.

— Gertrude Stein

This book is in every way except actual authorship Alice Toklas's book; it reflects her mind, her language, her private view of Gertrude, also her unique narrative powers. Every story in it is told as Alice herself had always told it. … Every story that ever came into the house eventually got told in Alice's way, and this was its definitive version.

— Gertrude Stein

As I read it, my ears opened up for the first time in my life and I began to hear Negroes... Above all, I began to hear for the first time the pure, deep dialect of my grandmother. And from that moment on, in all my attempts at writing I was able to tap that vast reservoir of living speech that went on about me.

— Gertrude Stein

I'll always be Alice Toklas if you'll be Gertrude Stein.

— Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein, all courage and will, is a soldier of minimalism. Her work, unlike the resonating silences in the art of Samuel Beckett, embodies in its loquacity and verbosity the curious paradox of the minimalist form. This art of the nuance in repetition and placement she shares with the orchestral compositions of Philip Glass.

— Gertrude Stein

A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose said my old friend Gertrude Stein.

— Gertrude Stein

It will take her years to understand the things she's said tonight.

— Gertrude Stein

Unsurprisingly, Gertrude Stein was not a fan of the question mark. Are you beginning to suspect—as I am—that there was something wrong at home?

— Gertrude Stein

The supreme egocentric of the most perfect clique of egocentrics.

— Gertrude Stein

Miss Stein was a past master in making nothing happen very slowly.

— Gertrude Stein

There's a wonderful family called Stein,And no-one can understand Ein.

— Gertrude Stein

It is funny the two things most men are proudest of is the thing that any man can do and doing does in the same way, that is being drunk and being the father of their son.

— Gertrude Stein

Counting is the religion of this generation it is its hope and its salvation.

— Gertrude Stein

Before the flowers of friendship faded friendship faded.

— Gertrude Stein

This is the lesson that history teaches: repetition.

— Gertrude Stein

What is marriage, is marriage protection or religion, is marriage renunciation or abundance, is marriage a stepping-stone or an end. What is marriage.

— Gertrude Stein

It is very easy to love alone.

— Gertrude Stein