Gertrude Stein - Everybody's Autobiography (1937)

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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
Anything scares me, anything scares anyone but really after all considering how dangerous everything is nothing is really very frightening.

Gertrude Stein
Perhaps I am not I even if my little dog knows me but anyway I like what I have and now it is today.

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
'Native' always means people who belong somewhere else, because they had once belonged somewhere. That shows us the white race does not really belong anywhere, because they think of everybody else as native.

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

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

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
One never discusses anything with anybody who can understand one discusses things with people who cannot understand.

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

Gertrude Stein
My sister four years older simply existed for me because I had to sleep in the same room with her. Besides, it is natural not to care about a sister, certainly not when she is four years older and grinds her teeth at night.

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

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
Of Oakland, California:
There is no there there.

Gertrude Stein
Explanations are clear but since no one to whom a thing is explained can connect the explanations with what is really clear, therefore clear explanations are not clear. Now this is a simple thing that anybody who has ever argued or quarreled knows perfectly well is a simple thing, only when they read it they do not understand it because they do not see that understanding and believing are not the same thing.

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
If the stars are suns and the earth is the earth and there are men only upon this earth and anything can put an end to anything and any dog does anything like anybody does it what is the difference between eternity and anything.

Gertrude Stein