Gertrude Stein Quotes

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

From the very nature of progress, all ages must be transitional.

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.

The one thing that everybody wants is to be free...not to be managed, threatened, directed, restrained, obliged, fearful, administered, they want none of these things they all want to feel free, the word discipline, and forbidden and investigated and imprisoned brings horror and fear into all hearts, they do not want to be afraid not more than is necessary in the ordinary business of living where one has to earn one's living and has to fear want and disease and death....The only thing that any one wants now is to be free, to be let alone, to live their life as they can, but not to be watched, controlled and scared, no no, not.

~ September, 1943

Once upon a time Baltimore was necessary.

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.

The way to resume is to resume.
If we knew everything ahead of time, all would be dictation not creation.

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

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

It is a surprising thing that the largest city in the world should have a population as gentle and pleasant and intimate and considerate and comforting as a little bit of a place where everybody knows everybody and everything, but astonishing or not it is perfectly true and the inhabitants of New York are just like that, and they are like that and this thing is a delightful, natural and gentle and sweet and comforting thing.

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

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

Affectations can be dangerous.

More great Americans were failures than they were successes. They mostly spent their lives in not having a buyer for what they had for sale.

When is there some discharge when. There never is.

Romance is everything.

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 they are so suspicious how can they be so friendly but they just are.

There is no use in a smell, in taste, in teeth, in toast, in anything, there is no use at all and the respect is mutual.
Why should that which is uneven, that which is resumed, that which is tolerable why should all this resemble a smell, a thing is there, it whistles, it is not narrower, why is there no obligation to stay away and yet courage, courage is everywhere and the best remains to stay.

There was the first Balkan war and the second Balkan war and then there was the first world war. It is extraordinary how having done a thing once you have to do it again, there is the pleasure of coincidence and there is the pleasure of repetition, and so there is the second world war, and in between there was the Abyssinian war and the Spanish civil war.

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

A frontier is a division between countries. A history of a country is not a history of the changing of frontiers although many think so particularly those near the frontier the history of a country is why they like things which they have and which they do not exchange for other things for which they do not care.

A rose is a rose is a rose.

Cloudiness what is cloudiness, is it a lining, is it a roll, is it melting.

In America, everybody is, but some are more than others.

If you can't say anything nice about anyone else, come sit next to me.

If you write a half hour a day it makes a lot of writing year by year.

Anything one does every day is important and imposing and anywhere one lives is interesting and beautiful.

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.

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

Silent gratitude isn't much use to anyone.

You never answer a question nobody does.

Nature is not natural and that is natural enough.

I like familiarity. In me it does not bring contempt-only more familiarity.

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

The souls of people do not interest him, that is to say for him the reality of life is in the head, the face and the body and this is for him so important, so persistent, so complete that it is not at all necessary to think of any other thing and the soul is another thing.

It is very difficult in quarreling to be certain in either one what the other one is remembering. It is very often astonishing to each one quarreling to find out what the other one was remembering for quarreling. Mostly in quarreling not any one is finding out what the other one is remembering for quarreling, what the other one is remembering from quarreling.

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.

The difference between saints, forget-me-nots, and mountains, have to, have to, have to at a time.

It is the human habit to think in centuries from a grandparent to a grandchild because it just does take about a hundred years for things to cease to have the same meaning as they did before,

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.

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

When in a museum, walk slowly but keep walking.

Nothing changes from one generation to another except the things seen and the things seen make that generation, that is to say nothing changes in people from one generation to another except the way of seeing and being seen.

The funny part of it all is that relatively few people seem to go crazy, relatively few even a little crazy or even a little weird, relatively few, and those few because they have nothing to do that is to say they have nothing to do or they do not do anything that has anything to do with the war only with food and cold and little things like that.

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.

A very important thing is not to make up your mind that you are any one thing.

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.

I caught sight of a splendid Misses. She had handerchiefs and kisses. She had eyes and yellow shoes she had everything to choose and she chose me. In passing through France she wore a Chinese hat and so did I. In looking at the sun she read a map and so did I…. In loving the blue sea she had a pain. And so did I. In loving me she of necessity thought first. And so did I. How prettily we swim. Not in water. Not on land. But in love. How often do we need trees and hills. Not often. And how often do we need mountains. Not very often.

Wake a question. Eat an instant, answer

One must either accept some theory or else believe one's own instinct or follow the world's opinion.

Family living can go on existing. Very many are
remembering this thing are remembering that family
living living can go on existing. Very many are quite
certain that family living can go on existing. Very
many are remembering that they are quite certain that
family living can go on existing.

Sinclair Lewis is the perfect example of the false sense of time of the newspaper world ... [ellipsis in source] He was always dominated by an artificial time when he wrote Main Street ... He did not create actual human beings at any time. That is what makes it newspaper. Sinclair Lewis is the typical newspaperman and everything he says is newspaper. The difference between a thinker and a newspaperman is that a thinker enters right into things, a newspaperman is superficial.

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.

The subject matter of art is life, life as it actually is; but the function of art is to make life better.

Name any name and then remember everybody you ever knew who bore that name. Are they all alike. I think so.

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

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

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

Since the war nothing is so really frightening not the dark not alone in a room or anything on a road or a dog or a moon but two things, yes, indigestion and high places they are frightening.

Remarks are not literature.

The unreal is natural, so natural that it makes of unreality the most natural of anything natural. That is what America does, and that is what America is.

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

Poetry is concerned with using with abusing, with losing
with wanting, with denying with avoiding with adoring
with replacing the noun. It is doing that always
doing that, doing that and doing nothing but that.
Poetry is doing nothing but using losing refusing and
pleasing and betraying and caressing nouns. That is
what poetry does, that is what poetry has to do no
matter what kind of poetry it is. And there are a
great many kinds of poetry.

Art isn't everything. It's just about everything.

Water astonishing and difficult altogether makes a meadow and a stroke.

It is nice in France they adapt themselves to everything slowly they change completely but all the time they know that they are as they were.

The nineteenth century was completely lacking in logic, it had cosmic terms and hopes, and aspirations, and discoveries, and ideals but it had no logic.

One thing is certain the only thing that makes you younger or older is that nothing can happen that is different from what you expected and when that happens and it mostly does happen everything is different from what you expected then there is no difference between
being younger or older.

I really do not know that anything has ever been more exciting than diagramming sentences.

Poetry consists in a rhyming dictionary and things seen.

Love is the skillful audacity required to share an inner life

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

Just as everybody has the vote including women, I think children should, because as a child is conscious of itself then it has to me an existence and has a stake in what happens.

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.

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

The only thing that is different from one time to another is what is seen and what is seen depends upon how everybody is doing everything.

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.

I simply contend that the middle-class ideal which demands that people be affectionate, respectable, honest and content, that they avoid excitements and cultivate serenity is the ideal that appeals to me, it is in short the ideal of affectionate family life, of honorable business methods.

More and more I like to take a train. I understand why the French prefer it to automobiling it is so much more sociable, and of course these days so much more of an adventure, and the irregularity of its regularity is fascinating.

Twenty-five years run around so quickly but thirty one years is a long time.

More and more I am certain that the only difference between man and animals is that men can count and animals cannot and if they count they mostly do count money ...

Two things are always the same the dance and war.

Why should a sequence of words be anything but a pleasure?

The phenomenon of nature is more splendid than the daily events of nature, certainly, so then the twentieth century is splendid.

Mostly every one is needing some one to be one listening to that one being one being one boasting.

It is an extraordinary thing but it is true, wars are only a means of publicising the things already accomplished.

Animals in different countries have different expressions just as the people in different countries differ in expression.

The thing that differentiates man from animals is money.

Near a war is always not very near.

Dogs are dogs, you sometimes think that they are not but they are. And they always are here there and everywhere.

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.

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

The more you see how the country is the more you do not wonder why they shut the door. The women do in a way and yet if they did not it would be best.

I like the feeling of words doing as they want to do and as they have to do.

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.

I wish that I was where I am.

Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.

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

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