Gertrude Stein Quotes

255 Sourced Quotes

If you do not remember while you are writing, it may seem confused to others but actually it is clear and eventually that clarity will be clear, that is what a master-piece is, but if you remember while you are writing it will seem clear at the time to any one but the clarity will go out of it that is what a master-piece is not.

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.

Gertrude Stein
It is natural to suppose that a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.

Gertrude Stein
The kind of loving women and men have in them and the ways it comes out from them makes for them the bottom nature in them, gives to them their kind of thinking, makes the character they have all their living in them, makes them then their kind of women and men and there are always many millions made of each kind of them.

Gertrude Stein
I could never be one of two I could never be two in one as married couples do and can, I am but one all one, one and all one, and so I have never been married to any one.

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

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

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

Gertrude Stein
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.

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

Gertrude Stein
You are brilliant and subtle if you come from Iowa and really strange and you live as you live and you are always very well taken care of if you come from Iowa.

Gertrude Stein
A comma by helping you along holding your coat for you and putting on your shoes keeps you from living your life as actively as you should lead it and to me for many years... the use of them was positively degrading.

Gertrude Stein
Eating and sleeping are not like loving and breathing. Washing is not like eating and sleeping. Believing is like breathing and loving. Religion can be believing, it can be like breathing, it can be like loving, it can be like eating or sleeping, it can be like washing, it can be something to fill up a place when someone has lost out of them a piece that it was not natural for them to have in them.

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
I talk a lot I like to talk and I talk even more than that I may say I talk most of the time and I listen a fair amount too and as I have said the essence of being a genius is to be able to talk and listen to listen while talking and talk while listening but and this is very important very important indeed talking has nothing to do with creation.

Gertrude Stein
They were regular in being gay, they learned little things that are things in being gay, they learned many little things that are things in being gay, they were gay every day, they were regular, they were gay, they were gay the same length of time every day, they were gay, they were quite regularly gay.

Gertrude Stein
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.

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

Gertrude Stein
Suddenly it was all different, what I did had a value that made people ready to pay, up to that time everything I did had a value because nobody was ready to pay. 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
As there was never any question there was never any answer.

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

Gertrude Stein
It is very funny about money. The thing that differentiates man from animals is money. All animals have the same emotions and the same ways as men. Anybody who has lots of animals around knows that. But the thing no animal can do is count, and the thing no animal can know is money.

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

Gertrude Stein
I murmured to Picasso that I liked his portrait of Gertrude Stein. Yes, he said, everybody says that she does not look like it but that does not make any difference, she will.

Gertrude Stein
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
Superstition is believing that something means anything and that anything means something and that each thing means a particular thing and will mean a particular thing is coming. Oh yes it does.

Gertrude Stein
No one is ahead of his time, it is only that the particular variety of creating his time is the one that his contemporaries who are also creating their own time refuse to accept... For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling.

Gertrude Stein
Propaganda is not French, it is not civilized to want other people to believe what you believe because the essence of being civilised is to possess yourself as you are, and if you possess yourself as you are you of course cannot possess any one else, it is not your business.

Gertrude Stein
Everywhere there was somewhere and everywhere there they were men women children dogs cows wild pigs little rabbits cats lizards and animals. That is the way it was. And everybody dogs cats sheep rabbits and lizards and children all wanted to tell... all about themselves.

Gertrude Stein