Gertrude Stein Quotes & Sayings

That is what war is and dancing it is forward and back, when one is out walking one wants not to go back the way they came but in dancing and in war it is forward and back. — Gertrude Stein

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. — Gertrude Stein

Anybody is as their land and air is. Anybody is as the sky is low or high, the air heavy or clear and anybody is as there is wind or no wind there. It is that which makes them and the arts they make and the work they do and the way they eat and the way they drink and the way they learn and everything. — Gertrude Stein

You cannot go into the womb to form the child; it is there and makes itself and comes forth whole-and there it is and you have made it and have felt it, but it has come itself. — Gertrude Stein

History takes time. History makes memory. — Gertrude Stein

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

Every man is the maker of his own fortune — Gertrude Stein

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. — Gertrude Stein

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

I could undertake to be an efficient pupil if it were possible to find an efficient teacher. — Gertrude Stein

Some out of their own virtue make a god who sometimes later is a nuisance to them, a terror perhaps to them, a difficult thing to be forgetting. — 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

The composition is the thing seen by everyone living in the living they are doing, they are the composing of the composition that at the time they are living is the composition of the time in which they are living. — Gertrude Stein

Romance is everything. — Gertrude Stein

Very likely education does not make very much difference. — 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

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

It takes a heap of loafing to write a book. — Gertrude Stein

She says it is a good thing to have no sense of how it is done in the things that amuse you. You should have one absorbing occupation and as for the other things in life for full enjoyment you should only contemplate results. In this way you are bound to feel more about it than those who know a little of how it is done. — Gertrude Stein

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, — Gertrude Stein

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. — Gertrude Stein

I think one is naturally impressed by anything having a beginning a middle and an ending when one is beginning writing and that it is a natural thing because when one is emerging from adolescence, which is really when one first begins writing one feels that one would not have been one emerging from adolescence if there had not been a beginning and a middle and an ending to anything. — Gertrude 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

Before the flowers of friendship faded friendship faded. — Gertrude Stein

I cannot write too much upon how necessary it is to be completely conservative that is particularly traditional in order to be free. — 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

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

I am I because my little dog knows me but, creatively speaking the little dog knowing that you are you and your recognising that he knows, that is what destroys creation. That is what makes school. — Gertrude Stein

I was somewhat drunk with what I had done. And I am always one to prefer being sober. — Gertrude Stein

Coffee is a lot more than just a drink; it's something happening. Not as in hip, but like an event, a place to be, but not like a location, but like somewhere within yourself. It gives you time, but not actual hours or minutes, but a chance to be, like be yourself, and have a second cup — Gertrude Stein

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. — Gertrude Stein

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. — Gertrude Stein

Forensics is eloquence and reduction. — Gertrude Stein

Nothing has happened today except kindness. — Gertrude Stein

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

To be regularly gay was to do every day the gay thing that they did every day. To be regularly gay was to end every day at the same time after they had been regularly gay. They were regularly gay. They were gay every day. They ended every day in the same way, at the same time, and they had been every day regularly gay. — Gertrude Stein

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

There are two kinds of men and women, those who have in them resisting as their way of winning those who have in them attacking as their way of winning ... — Gertrude Stein

Always it comes very slowly the completed understanding of it, the repeating each one does to tell it the whole history of the being in each one, always now I hear it. Always now slowly I
understand it. — Gertrude Stein

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. — Gertrude Stein

Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose. — Gertrude Stein

Our little ford was almost ready. She was later to be called Auntie after Gertrude Stein's aunt Pauline who always behaved admirably in emergencies and behaved fairly well most times if she was properly flattered. — Gertrude Stein

What is the answer? In that case, what is the question? — Gertrude Stein

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. — Gertrude Stein

Affectations can be dangerous. — Gertrude Stein

There is no real reality to a really imagined life any more. — Gertrude Stein

It is very easy to love alone. — Gertrude Stein

I have been the creative literary mind of the century. — Gertrude Stein

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

It is all the question of identity ... As long as the outside does not put a value on you it remains outside but when it does put a value on you then it gets inside or rather if the outside puts a value on you then all your inside gets to be outside. — 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

A rose is a rose is a rose. — Gertrude Stein

In the morning there is meaning, in the evening there is feeling. — Gertrude Stein

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. — Gertrude Stein

It was a strange winter and nothing and everything happened. — Gertrude Stein

You never answer a question nobody does. — Gertrude Stein

When there is a war the years are longer that is to say the days are longer the months are longer the years are much longer but the weeks are shorter that is what makes a war. — Gertrude Stein

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. — Gertrude Stein

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

Action and reaction are equal and opposite. — Gertrude Stein

In tender hearted natures, those that mostly never feel strong passion, suffering often comes to make them harder. When these do not know in themselves what it is to suffer, suffering is then very awful to them and they badly want to help everyone who has to suffer, and they have a deep reverence for anybody who knows really how to always suffer. But when it comes to them to really suffer, they soon begin to lose their fear and tenderness and wonder. Why it isn't so very much to suffer, when even I can bear to do it. It isn't very pleasant to be having all the time, to stand it, but they are not so much wiser after all, all the others just because they know too how to bear it. — Gertrude Stein

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

Everybody said the same thing over and over again with infinite variations but over and over again until finally if you listened with great intensity you could hear it rise and fall and tell all that there was inside them, not so much by the actual words they said or the thoughts they had but the movement of their thoughts and words endlessly the same and endlessly different. — Gertrude Stein

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

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, is is separate from themselves, it is not real but it is really there. — Gertrude Stein

Nature is not natural and that is natural enough. — Gertrude Stein

How I wish I were able to say what I think ... — Gertrude Stein

Is money money or isn't money money. Everybody who earns
it and spends it every day in order to live knows
that money is money, anybody who votes it to be
gathered in as taxes knows money is not money. That
is what makes everybody go crazy ... When you earn
money and spend money every day anybody can know the
difference between a million and three. But when you
vote money away there really is not any difference
between a million and three. — Gertrude Stein

What good are roots if you can't take them with you — Gertrude Stein

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

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

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

Let me repeat what history teaches. History teaches. — Gertrude Stein

When you get there, there isn't any there there. — Gertrude Stein

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

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

There is a difference between twenty-nine and thirty. When you are twenty-nine it can be the beginning of everything. When you are thirty it can be the end of everything. — Gertrude Stein

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

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

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

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

Sugar is not a vegetable. — Gertrude Stein

How do you like what you have. This is a question that anybody can ask anybody. Ask it. — Gertrude Stein

Let me listen to me and not to them. — Gertrude Stein

An audience is pleasant if you have it, it is flattering and flattering is agreeable always, but if you have an audience the being an audience is their business, they are the audience you are the writer, let each attend to their own business. — Gertrude Stein

This is the real thing of disillusion that no one, not any one really is believing, seeing, understanding, thinking anything as you are thinking, believing, seeing, understanding such a thing. — Gertrude Stein

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. — Gertrude Stein

If you are looking down while you are walking it is better to walk up hill the ground is nearer. — Gertrude Stein

Men cannot count, they do not know that two and two make four if women do not tell them so. — Gertrude Stein

Sculpture is made with two instruments and some supports and pretty air. — Gertrude Stein

Nothing is really so very frightening when everything is so very dangerous — Gertrude Stein

When in a museum, walk slowly but keep walking. — Gertrude Stein

I always say that you cannot tell what a picture really is or what an object really is until you dust it every day and you cannot tell what a book is until you type it or proof-read it. It then does something to you that only reading it never can do. — Gertrude Stein

There is too much fathering going on just now and there is no doubt about it fathers are depressing. — Gertrude Stein

I tell you old and young are better than tired middle-aged, nothing is so dead dead-tired, dead every way as middle-aged. — 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

You have to learn to do everything, even to die. — Gertrude Stein