Gertrude Stein

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

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.

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.

It is so friendly so simply friendly and though inevitable not a sadness and though occurring not a shock.

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

It is always a mistake to be plain-spoken.

You’ll be old and you never lived, and you kind of feel silly to lie down and die and to never have lived, to have been a job chaser and never have lived.

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

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

Action and reaction are equal and opposite.

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

Remarks are not literature.

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

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

Poetry consists in a rhyming dictionary and things seen.

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

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

Hemingway’s remarks are not literature.

Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.

A diary means yes indeed.

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

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.

If you can do it then why do it?

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

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.

An audience is always warming but it must never be necessary to your work.

Once more I can climb about and remind you that a woman in this epoch does the important literary thinking.

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.

There ain’t no answer. There ain’t gonna be any answer. There never has been an answer. That’s the answer.

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

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 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.

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

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

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.

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

America is my country and Paris is my hometown.

What is music. A passion for colonies not a love of country.

There is no there there.

It is funny that men who are supposed to be scientific cannot get themselves to realise 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.

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

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.

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

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

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

War is never fatal but always lost. Always lost.

The thing that differentiates man from animals is money.

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

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.

This is the lesson that history teaches: repetition.

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

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.

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

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

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

Nature is commonplace. Imitation is more interesting.

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

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 could undertake to be an efficient pupil if it were possible to find an efficient teacher.

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

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.

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

Before the flowers of friendship faded friendship faded.

Romance is everything.

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

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

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

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

History takes time. History makes memory.

We are always the same age inside.

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

But the problem is that 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?’

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

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

It is very easy to love alone.

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

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

Let me listen to me and not to them.

Men and girls, men and girls: Artificial swine and pearls.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

Very likely education does not make very much difference.

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

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

To write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write.

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.

Every adolescent has that dream every century has that dream every revolutionary has that dream, to destroy the family.

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.

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

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

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

Silent gratitude isn’t very much to anyone.

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

In a war everybody always knows all about Switzerland, in peace times it is just Switzerland but in war time it is the only country that everybody has confidence in, everybody.

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.

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

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

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