Gertrude Stein - You Quotes

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

Gertrude Stein
After all human beings have to live dogs too so as not to know that time is passing, that is the whole business of living to go on so they will not know that time is passing, that is why they get drunk that is why they like to go to war, during a war there is the most complete absence of the sense that time is passing a year of war lasts so much longer than any other year. After all that is what life is and that is the reason there is no Utopia, little or big young or old dog or man everybody wants every minute so filled that they are not conscious of that minute passing. It's just as well they do not think about it you have to be a genius to live in it and know it to exist in it and express it to accept it and deny it by creating it.

Gertrude Stein
Disillusionment in living is the finding out nobody agrees with you not those that are and were fighting with you. Disillusionment in living is the finding out nobody agrees with you not those that are fighting for you. Complete disillusionment is when you realise that no one can for they can't change.

Gertrude Stein
What's the use of being a little boy if you are going to grow up to be a man?

Gertrude Stein
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.

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

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

Gertrude Stein
I just tell you, and though I don't sound like it I've got plenty of sense, there ain't any answer, there ain't going to be any answer, there never has been any answer, that's the answer.

Gertrude Stein
One cannot come back too often to the question what is knowledge and to the answer knowledge is what one knows.... Knowledge is the thing you know and how can you know more than you do know.

Gertrude Stein
When you earn it and spend it you do know the difference between three dollars and a million dollars, but when you say it and vote it, it all sounds the same.

Gertrude Stein
They wanted to know how I succeeded in getting so much publicity, I said by having a small audience, I said if you have a big audience you have no publicity, this did seem to worry them and naturally it would worry them they wanted the publicity and the big audience, and really to have the biggest publicity you have to have a small one, yes all right the biggest publicity comes from the realest poetry and the realest poetry has a small audience not a big one, but it is really exciting and therefore it has the biggest publicity, all right that is it.

Gertrude Stein
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.

Gertrude Stein
You are so afraid of losing your moral sense that you are not willing to take it through anything more dangerous than a mud-puddle.

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
I dislike it when instead of saying Jew they say Hebrew or Israelite, or Semite, I do not like it and why should a Negro want to be called colored. Why should we want to lose being a Negro... I have stated that a noun to me is a stupid thing, if you know a thing and its name why bother about it but you have to know its name to talk about it. Well its name is Negro if it is a Negro and Jew if it is a Jew and both of them are nice strong names and so let us keep them.

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
I am Rose my eyes are blue
I am Rose and who are you
I am Rose and when I sing
I am Rose like anything.

Gertrude Stein
A long complicated sentence should force itself upon you, make you know yourself knowing it and the comma, well at the most a comma is a poor period that lets you stop and take a breath but if you want to take a breath you ought to know yourself that you want to take a breath.

Gertrude Stein
You are extraordinary within your limits, but your limits are extraordinary!

Gertrude Stein
What is the use of being a little boy if you are growing up to be a man.

Gertrude Stein
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.

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
But as they all say if we sell our home what will we have for it, money, and what is the use of that money, money goes and after it is gone then where are we, beside we have all we want, what can we do with money except lose it, money to spend is not very welcome, if you have it and you try to spend it, well spending money is an anxiety, saving money is a comfort and a pleasure, economy is not a duty it is a comfort, avarice is an excitement, but spending money is nothing, money spent is money non-existent, money saved is money realised...

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

Gertrude Stein
And identity is funny being yourself is funny as you are never yourself to yourself except as you remember yourself and then of course you do not believe yourself.

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

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
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.

Gertrude Stein