Gertrude Stein Quotes

Wake a question. Eat an instant, answer

Nature and man are opposed in Spain.

So many words to use. Oh do not say that words have a use.

It is inevitable when one has a great need of something one finds it. What you need you attract like a lover.

Men ... are so conservative, so selfish, so boresome, and ... they are so ugly, and ... they are
gullible, anybody can convince them.

This is the place of places and and it is here.

History takes time. History makes memory.

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

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

What is the answer? In that case, what is the question?

College professors have two bad traits. They are logical
and they are easily flattered.

Let me listen to me and not to them.

A piece of crystal. A change, in a change that is remarkable there is no reason to say that there was a time.

If fishes were wishes the ocean would be all of our desire.

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

A diary means yes indeed.

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

There ain't no answer.
There ain't gonna be any answer.
There never has been an answer.
There's your answer.

There never will be anything more interesting than that American Civil War.

To complicate things in new ways, that is really very easy; but to see things in new ways, that is difficult and that is why genius is so rare.

If you are a thinker, you will change the language. You will not use words the way others do.

Argument is to me the air I breathe.

A little artist has all the tragic unhappiness and the sorrows of a great artist and he is not a great artist.

Before the flowers of friendship faded friendship faded.

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

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

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

Just before she died she asked, What is the answer? No answer came. She laughed and said, In that case, what is the question? Then she died.

It is natural not to care about a sister certainly not when she is four years older and grinds her teeth at night.

The first hope of a painter who feels hopeful about painting is the hope that the painting will move, that it will live outside its frame.

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

It is very easy to love alone.

What is the use of a violent kind of delightfulness if there is no pleasure in not getting tired of it. - A substance in a cushion

There is no beginning to an end / But there is a beginning and an end / To beginning.

Honesty is a selfish virtue. Yes I am honest enough.

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

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

Supposing everyone lived at one time what would they say. They would observe that stringing string beans is universal.

Forensics is eloquence and reduction.

Oh, I wish I were a miser; being a miser must be so occupying.

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

You have to learn to do everything, even to die.

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

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

There is no such thing as being good to your wife.

I certainly do care for you Jeff Campbell less than you are always thinking and much more than you are ever knowing

You are all a lost generation.

How I wish I were able to say what I think ...

In France one must adapt oneself to the fragrance of a urinal.

This is the lesson that history teaches: repetition.

Replacing a casual aquaintance with an ordinary daughter does not make a son.

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

When is there some discharge when. There never is.

Cooking like everything else in France is logic and fashion.

I am writing for myself and strangers. This is the only way that I can do it.

I think the reason I am important is that I know everything.

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

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

Nothing is really so very frightening when everything is so very dangerous

If things happen all the time you are never nervous. It is when they are not happening that you are nervous.

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

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

It was a strange winter and nothing and everything happened.

When I go around and speak on campuses,
I still don't get young men standing up and saying,
How can I combine career and family?

Considering how dangerous everything is, nothing is really very frightening.

Repeating is the whole of living and by repeating comes understanding, and understanding is to some the most important part of living.

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.

Near a war is always not very near.

There is no there there.

A masterpiece ... may be unwelcome but it is never dull.

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

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.

Do not forget birthdays. This is in no way a propaganda for a larger population.

Literature - creative literature - unconcerned with sex, is inconceivable.

Start over again. Concentrate." [to a young Ernest Hemingway]

Suppose no one asked a question.
What would the answer be?

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

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

I've been rich and I've been poor. It's better to be rich.

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

A village explainer. Excellent if you were a village, but if you were not, not.
(on Ezra Pound)

Nobody knows what I am trying to do but I do and I know when I succeed.

Nothing is more interesting than that something that you eat.

Silent gratitude isn't much use to anyone.

Writing and reading is to me synonymous with existing.

I write for myself and strangers. The strangers, dear Readers, are an afterthought.

A house in the country is not the same as a country house.

There is no such thing as a natural sentence but there is such a thing as a natural paragraph and it must be found.

I had a family. They can be a nuisance in identity but there is no doubt no shadow of doubt that that identity the family identity we can do without.

I have lived half of my life in Paris, not the half the made me but the half in which I made what I made.

A cool red rose and a pink cut pink, a collapse and a sold hole, a little less hot. - Red roses.

You attract what you need like a lover

F. Scott Fitzgerald is the first of the last generation.

It is extraordinary that whole populations have no projects for the future, none at all. It certainly is extraordinary, but it is certainly true.

I know what Germans are. They are a funny people. They are always choosing someone to lead them in a direction which they do not want to go.

Generally speaking, everyone is more interesting doing nothing than doing anything.

You are so afraid of losing your moral sense that you are not willing to take it through anything more dangerous than a mud-puddle.

When moneys in a purse in my own pocket / It means wealth ...

Asparagus in a lean in a lean is to hot. This makes it art and it is wet weather wet weather wet

That is what you are. That's what you all are ... all of you young people who served in the war. You are a lost generation.