Gertrude Stein - Everybody's Autobiography (1937)

49 Sourced Quotes

View all Gertrude Stein Quotes
I do want to get rich but I never want to do what there is to do to get rich.

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

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
She took us to see her granddaughter who was teaching in the Dominican convent in San Raphael, we went across the bay on a ferry, that had not changed but Goat Island might just as well not have been there, anyway what was the use of my having come from Oakland it was not natural to have come from there yes write about it if I like or anything if I like but not there, there is no there there.

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

Gertrude Stein
I was clear, Alice Toklas says and very often mistaken but anyway I am clear I am a good American, I am slow-minded and quickly clear in expression, I am certain that I see everything that is seen and in between I stand around but I do not wait, no American can wait he can stand around and do nothing but he cannot wait, that is why he is not like Milton who served by standing and waiting, Americans can neither serve nor wait, they can stand and sit down and get up and walk around but they can neither serve nor wait.

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
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.

Gertrude Stein
There will never be anything in America more interesting than the Civil War, never.

Gertrude Stein
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 tills it.

Gertrude Stein
If anything is a surprise then there is not much difference between older and younger because the only thing that does make anybody older is that they cannot be surprised.

Gertrude Stein
A saint a real saint never does anything, a martyr does something but a really good saint does nothing, and so I wanted to have Four Saints who did nothing and I wrote the Four Saints In Three Acts and they did nothing and that was everything.
Generally speaking anybody is more interesting doing nothing than doing something.

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
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
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
Would I if I could by pushing a button would I kill five thousand Chinamen if I could save my brother from anything. Well I was very fond of my brother and I could completely imagine his suffering and I replied that five thousand Chinamen were something I could not imagine and so it was not interesting.
One has to remember that about imagination, that is when the world gets dull when everybody does not know what they can or what they cannot really imagine.

Gertrude Stein
The head-lines which do not head anything they simply replace something but they do not make anything.

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

Gertrude Stein
It is a difficult thing to like anybody else's ideas of being funny.

Gertrude Stein
In America, everybody is, but some are more than others.

Gertrude Stein
I was talking like this to the Princeton professor and he said well if these are the facts there is no hope and I said well what is hope hope is just contact with the facts.

Gertrude Stein