Gertrude Stein - You Quotes

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

Gertrude Stein
I certainly do care for you Jeff Campbell less than you are always thinking and much more than you are ever knowing

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
[Ezra Pound] was a village explainer, excellent if you were a village, but if you were not, not.

Gertrude Stein
Alice Toklas' father had almost once had an oil well they dug and dug but naturally the oil did not gush, naturally not these things never do happen to any one one knows, if it could happen to them you would not be very likely to know them most naturally not.

Gertrude Stein
If you write a half hour a day it makes a lot of writing year by year.

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
A beauty is not suddenly in a circle. It comes with rapture. A great deal of beauty is rapture. A circle is a necessity. Otherwise you would see no one. We each have our circle.

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

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

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

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
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
It bothers a lot of people, but like you said, it's nobody's business, it came from the Judeo-Christian ethos, especially Saint Paul the bastard, but he was complaining about youngsters who were not really that way, they did it for money, everybody suspects us or knows but nobody says anything about it.

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

Gertrude Stein
A saint is one to be for two when three and you make five and two and cover.
A at most.
Saint saint a saint.

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
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
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
This is then complete disillusionment in living, the complete realization that no one can believe as you do about anything.

Gertrude Stein
Before one is successful that is before any one is ready to pay money for anything you do then you are certain that every word you have written is an important word to have written and that any word you have written is as important as any other word and you keep everything you have written with great care.

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

Gertrude Stein
Grammar little by little is not a thing. Which may gain.
There. Make twenty-five be a woman. The meaning of that does not interest me. It is a complexion that interests that makes ridiculous because that does not make it something else. But it does make them which is again me.
Make twenty-five be a woman. I do not lose it. The color is there. Do you see. Dependent entirely upon how one word follows another. Who knows how Howard likes hearing. I can do it so easily it always makes grammar but is it grammar. Forget grammar and think about potatoes. Grammar after all has to do with why they were presented.

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
When you are writing before there is an audience anything written is as important as any other thing and you cherish anything and everything that you have written. After the audience begins, naturally they create something that is they create you, and so not everything is so important, something is more important than another thing.

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

Gertrude Stein