Quotes from Gertrude Stein

Considering how dangerous everything is, nothing is really very frightening.

twenty-five years run around so quickly but thirty one years is a long time.

At any moment when you are you, you are you without the memory of yourself because if you remember yourself while you are you, you are not for the purposes of creating you.

It is hard living down the tempers we are born with. We all begin well, for in our youth there is nothing we are more intolerant of than our own sins writ large in others and we fight them fiercely in ourselves; but we grow old and we see that these our sins are of all sins the really harmless ones to own, nay that they give a charm to any character, and so our struggle with them dies away.

So many words to use. Oh do not say that words have a use.

replacing a casual aquaintance with an ordinary daughter does not make a son.

Sugar is not a vegetable.

I have lived half of my life in Paris, not the half the made me but the half in which I made what I made.

The more you see how the country is the more you do not wonder why they shut the door. The women do in a way and yet if they did not it would be best.

Let me repeat what history teaches. History teaches.

he [Picasso] used to say quite often, paper lasts quite as well as paint and after all it all ages together, why not, and he said further, after all, later, no one will see the picture, they will see the legend of the picture, the legend that the picture has created, then it makes no difference if the picture lasts or does not last.

They think they are interested about the atomic bomb but they really are not not any more than I am. Really not. They may be a little scared, I am not so scared, there is so much to be scared of so what is the use of bothering to be scared, and if you are not scared the atomic bomb is not interesting. Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense. They listen so much that they forget to be natural. This is a nice story.

A frontier is a division between countries. A history of a country is not a history of the changing of frontiers although many think so particularly those near the frontier the history of a country is why they like things which they have and which they do not exchange for other things for which they do not care.

What is a sentence. A sentence is left to be alright and therefor (sic) they are barely here. A day is additional with there having been with a condition of remaining all day which it is partly that they like to look about made it for them in reference as they knew that is whenever they met by the arrangement which had been made for them in the mean time. What is a sentence. They need not be having them made by them. in 'Sentences' chapter, p. 175 my edition, How to Write.

She answered him, there is nothing within you that fights itself and hitherto you have had the instinct to produce antagonism in others which stimulated you to attack.

Some one who was living was almost always listening. Some one who was loving was almost always listening.

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.

That is what you are. That's what you all are ... all of you young people who served in the war. You are a lost generation.

If you can do it, why do it. ~ Gertrude Stein

Start all over again and this time, concentrate. [to a young Ernest Hemingway]

The painter does not conceive himself as existing in himself, he conceives himself as a reflection of the objects he has put into his pictures and he lives in the reflections of his pictures, a writer, a serious writer, conceives himself as existing by and in himself, he does not at all live in the reflection of his books, to write he must first of all exist in himself, but for a painter to be able to paint, the painting must first of all be done.

When is there some discharge when. There never is.

I wish to remain to remember that stanzas go on

There is no use in a smell, in taste, in teeth, in toast, in anything, there is no use at all and the respect is mutual. Why should that which is uneven, that which is resumed, that which is tolerable why should all this resemble a smell, a thing is there, it whistles, it is not narrower, why is there no obligation to stay away and yet courage, courage is everywhere and the best remains to stay.