Stein Quotes

I have declared that patience is never more than patient. I too have declared, that I who am not patient am patient. ~ Gertrude Stein

As journalism dies, I kind of feel like I want some skills besides writing. I'd like to be able to write movies or host TV shows or whatever. Things that I might actually not inherently like quite as much, but are interesting and fun things to do. A good backup plan. ~ Joel Stein

I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. ~ Ben Stein

But I wondered why they had waited for Eve's illness to make themselves available for companionship. ~ Garth Stein

He [Picasso] used to say quite often, paper lasts quite as well as paint and after all it all ages together, why not, and he said further, after all, later, no one will see the picture, they will see the legend of the picture, the legend that the picture has created, then it makes no difference if the picture lasts or does not last. ~ Gertrude Stein

ON HER DEATHBED, Gertrude Stein is said to have asked, 'What is the answer?' Then, after a long silence, 'What is the question?' Don't start looking in the Bible for the answers it gives. Start by listening for the questions it asks. ~ Frederick Buechner

Dear God, she couldn't give this man sex. She could barely give it to Van, and he currently smelled so good she just wanted to shove her face under his t-shirt and eat whatever she found there. ~ Charlotte Stein

To write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write. ~ Gertrude Stein

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

I love the Chinese words for greeting: not strictly 'Hello' but 'Have you eaten yet? ~ Rick Stein

There is no such thing as a survivable or local nuclear war. ~ Jill Stein

There are people out there who get annoyed at the story that Djuna barnes, rather than identify as a lesbian, preferred to say that she 'just loved Thelma.' Gertrude Stein reputedly made similar claims, albeit not in those exact terms, about Alice. I get why it's politically maddening, but I've also always thought it a little romantic - the romance of letting an individual experience of desire take precedence over a categorical one. ~ Maggie Nelson

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. ~ Gertrude Stein

She died that night. Her last breath took her soul, I saw it in my dream. I saw her soul leave her body as she exhaled, and then she had no more needs, no more reason; she was released from her body, and being released, she continued her journey elsewhere, high in the firmament where soul material gathers and plays out all the dreams and joys of which we temporal beings can barely conceive, all the things that are beyond our comprehension, but even so, are not beyond our attainment if we choose to attain them, and believe that we truly can. ~ Garth Stein

I would never forbid you. I can't forbid you. It's not in my power to, and it never should be. ~ Charlotte Stein

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

Any problems that may occur have ultimately been caused by you, because you are responsible for where you are and what you are doing there. ~ Garth Stein

Eating too much meat gives you indigestion and evil thoughts make you eat too much meat. ~ Gertrude Stein

I think, there are many people who are much smarter than I am, and many, many, many who are much harder-working than I am, but in terms of the range of my activities, they're unique. ~ Ben Stein

Prime-time network television has become an island without religion in an ever-more-religious America. ~ Ben Stein

I marveled at them both; how difficult it must be to be a person. To constantly subvert your desires. To worry about doing the right thing, rather than doing what is most expedient. At that moment, honestly, I had grave doubts as to my ability to interact on such a level. I wondered if I could ever become the human I hoped to be. ~ Garth Stein

There is art and there is official art, there always has been and there always will be. ~ Gertrude Stein

I think the reason I am important is that I know everything. ~ Gertrude Stein

It is inevitable that some defeat will enter even the most victorious life. The human spirit is never finished when it is defeated ... it is finished when it surrenders. ~ Ben Stein

It's not religion that's the problem - it's the lack of religion! ~ Jock 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. ~ Gertrude Stein

Near a war is always not very near. ~ Gertrude Stein

...the race isn't over until the checker flies. ~ Garth Stein

At any moment when you are you, you are you without the memory of yourself because if you remember yourself while you are you, you are not for the purposes of creating you. ~ 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 sees it. ~ Gertrude Stein

The vagaries of the industry and show business itself would not lead one to conclude a lengthy career - because things change. Popularities come and go. The tragedy of it is that somebody like Robin Williams should suffer from that, and be driven to commit suicide. If ever there was an untimely, unfair death, it was him. ~ Chris Stein

There is no point in being realistic about here and now, no use at all not any, and so it is not the nineteenth but the twentieth century, there is no realism now, life is not real it is not earnest, it is strange which is an entirely different matter. ~ Gertrude Stein

Be sure you don't stop the story while describing. You are a storyteller, not an interior decorator. ~ Sol Stein

There were times, many, many times, when she just didn't get him. She'd heard on numerous occasions that men were bad, wicked creatures, who'd do terrible things at a moment's notice. You wore the wrong skirt or bent over at an inopportune time and BAM. They slipped their penises into you. ~ Charlotte Stein

Stein resented the sedative power of religion, or rather the repose available to those blissfully ignorant that the medicament was a fictitious blank. In this exile from peace of mind to which his reason doomed him, he was like an insomniac driven to awaken sleepers from dreams illegitimately won by going around shouting, 'Don't you realize it was a placebo!' Thus it seemed to me that what you were up against in Stein was not logic rampant, but frustrated faith. He could not forgive God for not existing. ~ Peter De Vries

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

See - this is the problem. You don't even get where this is going. You can't just ask me to come in, or kiss me, or tell me you want to know what smoking pot feels like. When I'm close to you I feel crazy, okay? When you say my name I feel crazy. It's not ... the right thing for you. I don't think I can just ... be your friend. ~ Charlotte Stein

Using a dog as a narrator has limitations and it has advantages. The limitations are that a dog cannot speak. A dog has no thumbs. A dog can't communicate his thoughts except with gestures. ~ Garth Stein

Screaming at children over their grades, especially to the point of the child's tears, is child abuse, pure and simple. It's not funny and it's not good parenting. It is a crushing, scarring, disastrous experience for the child. It isn't the least bit funny. ~ Ben Stein

People are always worried about what's happening next. They often find it difficult to stand still, to occupy the now without worrying about the future. People are generally not satisfied with what they have; they are very concerned with what they are going to have. ~ Garth Stein

I have to tell you I never in my life anticipated getting this old, this fast. It seems as if I were 25 just a few days ago. ~ Ben Stein

The English language has been thrust upon Americans. And it is wrong. As static and immobile as are the English, just so ever-moving are Americans. Here is a huge country. Not a mere island. Naturally people move. And they need a moving language. A language that can interpret American life. Nouns and adjectives won't express American life. They are too weak, too immobile. But verbs, adverbs, prepositions and the like, ah, they are moving, just as Americans. Obviously we cannot suddenly junk the English language and adopt some other tongue. English is too connotative, too close to us. Our problem is to adapt the English language to American needs. To make it move with us Americans. That is the problem
to write things as they are, not as they seem. our aim must be not to explain things, but to write the thing itself, and thereby in itself be self explanatory. ~ Gertrude Stein

We know that we can do what men can do, but we still don't know that men can do what women can do. That's absolutely crucial. We can't go on doing two jobs. ~ Gertrude Stein

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. ~ Gertrude Stein

I wish to remain to remember that stanzas go on ~ 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

Hillary Clinton and the policies of Hillary and Bill - passed by Bill, but enthusiastically supported and promoted by Hillary - have really created this right-wing extremism that has produced Donald Trump. ~ Jill Stein

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

People and their rituals. They cling to things so hard sometimes. ~ Garth Stein

The composition of each epoch depends upon the way the frequented roads are frequented. ~ Gertrude Stein

Eve continued with the inexorable process of dying, Zoe spent too much time with her grandparents, and Denny and I worked at slowing the beating of our hearts so we wouldn't feel so much pain. ~ Garth Stein

If red is in everything it is not necessary. Is that not an argument for any use of it and even so is there any place that is better, is there any place that has so much stretched out. ~ Gertrude Stein

Wake a question. Eat an instant, answer ~ Gertrude Stein

F. Scott Fitzgerald is the first of the last generation. ~ Gertrude Stein

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

It seems all "protection" has to be monitored, considered, weighed and justified - I am suggesting we do that (but it's something Mary Shelley (and Gertrude Stein) also suggest). "Torch Song," the book's final section, looks at an arson committed by someone hired to protect the wilderness from fires, a catastrophic failure of protection! ~ Laura Mullen

Anybody can write, but not everybody invents new forms of writing. Gertrude Stein invented a new form of writing and her imitators are just 'talents.' Hemingway later invented his own form also. The criterion for judging talent or genius is ephemeral, speaking rationally in this world of graphs, but one gets the feeling definitely when a writer of genius amazes him by strokes of force never seen before and yet hauntingly familiar. ~ Jack Kerouac

It means zero to be against greed. ~ Ben 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

I understand you undertake to overthrow my undertaking. ~ Gertrude Stein

If I can achieve for Celtic what I have achieved for Hibs, then I feel I will have done well for them. ~ Jock Stein

People ask how I can be a conservative and still want higher taxes. It makes my head spin, and I guess it shows how old I am. But I thought that conservatives were supposed to like balanced budgets. I thought it was the conservative position to not leave heavy indebtedness to our grandchildren. ~ Ben 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

The corporate-powered parties are not gonna do it for us, not the greater or the lesser evil. We have to do it for ourselves. And the minute we stand up and stand together, we are unstoppable. ~ Jill Stein

I never thought to look at the New York Times one, even though I knew people were pissed off. I've seen YouTube videos from people who are pissed off at me about that and that takes a lot of effort to go find. ~ Joel Stein

August is a month when if it is hot weather it is really very hot. ~ Gertrude Stein

Here's why I will be a good person. Because I listen. I cannot speak, so I listen very well. I never interrupt, I never deflect the course of the conversation with a comment of my own. People, if you pay attention to them, change the direction of one another's conversations constantly. It's like having a passenger in your car who suddenly grabs the steering wheel and turns you down a side street. For instance, if we met a party and I wanted to tell you a story about the time I needed to get a soccer ball in my neighbor's yard but his dog chased me and I had to jump into a swimming pool to escape, and I began telling the story , you, upon hearing the words 'soccer' and 'neighbor' in the same sentence, might interrupt and mention that your childhood neighbor was Pele, the famous soccer player, and I might be courteous and say, Didn't he play for the Cosmos of New York? Did you grow up in New York? And you might reply that no, you grew up in Brazil on the streets of Tres Coracoes with Pele and I might say, I thought you were from Tennessee, and you might say, not originally, and then go on to outline your genealogy at length. So my initial conversational gambit - that I had a funny story about being chased by my neighbor's dog - would be totally lost, and only because you had to tell me all about Pele. Learn to listen! I beg of you. Pretend you are a dog like me and listen to other people rather than steal their stories. ~ Garth Stein

I had always wanted to love Eve as Denny loved her, but I never had because I was afraid. She was my rain. She was my unpredictable element. She was my fear. But a racer should not be afraid of the rain; a racer should embrace the rain. I, alone, could manifest a change around me. By changing my mood, my energy, I allowed Eve to regard me differently. And while I cannot say that I am a master of my own destiny, I can say that I have experienced a glimpse of mastery, and I know what I have to work toward. ~ Garth Stein

I'm an economist by training. I don't really work as an economist. I only worked briefly as an economist. ~ Ben Stein

It's frustrating for me to be unable to speak. To feel that I have so much to say, so many ways I can help, but I'm locked in a soundproof box, a game show isolation booth from which I can see out and I can hear what's going on, but they never turn on my microphone and they never let me out. It might drive a person mad. It certainly has driven many a dog mad. ~ Garth Stein

The real threat to reading isn't the time we spend hanging out, it's the time we spend online. ~ Lorin Stein

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

Do you know how long it takes to charm people from Maine? They're uptight white people coated with a hard exterior made from other uptight white people. ~ Joel Stein

He had hoped she would assume he had succumbed again to methamphetamine hydrochloride and was sparing her the agony of his descent back into the hell of chemical dependence. What it really was was that he had again decided those 50 grams of resin-soaked dope, which had been so potent that on the second day it had given him an anxiety attack so paralyzing that he had gone to the bathroom in a Tufts University commemorative ceramic stein to avoid leaving his bedroom, represented his very last debauch ever with dope, and that he had to cut himself off from all possible future sources of temptation and supply, ~ David Foster Wallace

If you want to fight the evil you see in finance and industry, get to work reading the corporate filings, see if there has been fraud, and where you find it, report it to the SEC or write about it or blog about it. ~ Ben Stein

I would be deliciously pleased if you could rectify this issue. ~ Charlotte Stein

Why don't you just call yourself a lesbian? Random Guy wants to know. The answer seems so obvious. Because I'm not. But he presses further and that's when the answer really becomes clear. It's more than simply the attraction to guys which has always been there, and more than the attraction to women that I'm just beginning to explore. It's about potential, about possibility, about open-mindedness, and especially about making choices based on values and individuals rather than mere gender. ~ Audrey Beth Stein

Wow, bad news. Mr. Obama now hates Israel because the Israelis want to build 1,600 apartments in their own capital city, Jerusalem. Russia hates Israel, too. So do the Europeans. So does Ban Ki-moon, a Korean who is secretary-general of the UN. ~ Ben Stein

[On Ezra Pound:] A village explainer, excellent if you were a village, but if you were not, not. ~ Gertrude Stein

The Obama Administration has embraced the policies of George W. Bush, and then gone much further. Wall Street bailouts went ballistic under Obama-$700 billion under Bush, but $4.5 trillion under Obama, plus another $16 trillion in zero-interest loans for Wall Street. ~ Jill Stein

In documentary films, you're a storyteller using found objects. You still have to have a story arc and all the elements that make a good story. It really helped me mature as a storyteller. ~ Garth Stein

If anyone comes to me, I want to lead them to Him. ~ Edith Stein

Love is the skillful audacity required to share an inner life ~ Gertrude Stein

I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees Christmas trees. I don't feel threatened. I don't feel discriminated against. ~ Ben Stein

I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it sis my duty ... This is my highest and best use as a human. ~ Ben Stein

He suggested devils, skulls, harsh masculine drawings. This thing was ... heart poundingly good. She wanted to pluck it, and bury her face in it, and keep it in a vase by her bedside. ~ Charlotte Stein

A creator is not in advance of his generation but he is the first of his contemporaries to be conscious of what is happening to his generation. ~ Gertrude Stein

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. ~ Gertrude Stein

Humans are alive, therefore life must be complex. ~ Ben Stein

Success at any endeavor on an elite level demands selfishness. ~ Garth Stein

Dialogue, contrary to popular view, is not a recording of actual speech; it is a semblance of speech, an invented language of exchanges that build in tempo or content toward climaxes. ~ Sol Stein

Americans are terrified because so many of them have been laid off in recent years and months and they fear that they may be next. Even if they have not been laid off or have not known anyone laid off, they definitely know someone who has lost his home. ~ Ben Stein

It is natural to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes to that siren until she allures us to our death. ~ Gertrude Stein

We should always keep an open mind about any new phenomenon in nature. To merely say that's impossible, therefore it doesn't exist, is to commit a serious error. A much better approach would be to say That's quite unlikely, but show me the evidence you have that says that it may be so. It would be the height of arrogance to think that man knows everything possible about the Universe or the Earth. There are many things yet to be discovered, and that is why we have scientific research (or any kind of research). That should be the rationalist's approach to parapsychology and the occult. ~ Gordon Stein

When wine drinkers tell me they taste notes of cherries, tobacco and rose petals, usually all I can detect is a whole lot of jackass. ~ Joel Stein

Oh, my faith has flagged at times. It's easy to fall back into the same routines and paint over the sublime with coat after coat of indifference ... I promise you something: when you have touched the face of God, you can never unlearn what you have learned. You can never unsee what you have seen. ~ Garth Stein

Stories continue in all directions to include even the retelling of the stories themselves, as legend is informed by interpretation, and interpretation is informed by time. ~ Garth Stein

To defend my fear of sudden change, I chose to believe that life was incremental, that the tiny decisions you make every day determine your fate, that your job is to captain an enormous ship subtly into ever-clearer waters. But that's not how it works at all. Life occurs in moments. You get into college. You propose. You get the job. You get cancer. You get fired. She leaves you ... Because I was born in a stable country at a stable time, I falsely extrapolated that change is incremental. But if you zoom out just a little bit, you see that life is soccer, not basketball. It's revolution, invention, war. It's big bangs, exploding stars, asteroids killing the dinosaurs. Which means that all the action is in the risk taking, whether I want it to be or not. ~ Joel Stein

You know, kissing, she said, as though this was just going to be a demonstration. Which it apparently was, because suddenly she found herself leaning forward and
It lasted no more than a moment. Barely anything at all, really. And yet when she pulled back, she could read the effect it'd had, all over his face. It hummed through him, visibly. His big eyes swallowed her whole. ~ Charlotte Stein

The car goes where the eyes go. ~ Garth Stein