110+ Gertrude Stein Quotes On Writing, Art And Oakland

Gertrude Stein was an American author, poet, playwright and art collector. She was a modernist writer known for her experimental use of language and exploration of the subconscious. Her most famous works include The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Three Lives, and Tender Buttons. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Gertrude Stein on writing, love, art.

Top 10 Gertrude Stein Quotes

1. Whoever said money can't buy happiness didn't know where to shop
2. Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.
3. 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.
4. A vegetable garden in the beginning looks so promising and then after all little by little it grows nothing but vegetables, nothing, nothing but vegetables.
5. You are all a lost generation.
6. America is my country and Paris is my hometown.
7. A very important thing is not to make up your mind that you are any one thing.
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. Love: the skillful audacity required to share an inner life.

Gertrude Stein Image Quotes

A very important thing is not to make up your mind that you are any one thing. — Gertrude Stein

Love: the skillful audacity required to share an inner life. — Gertrude Stein

Let me listen to myself and not to them. — Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein Short Quotes

• Every day is a renewal, every morning the daily miracle. This joy you feel is life.
• Let me listen to myself and not to them.
• When in a museum, walk slowly but keep walking.
• Forensics is eloquence and reduction.
• We are always the same age inside.
• In the morning there is meaning, in the evening there is feeling.
• I have always noticed that in portraits of really great writers the mouth is always firmly closed.
• Money is always there but the pockets change.
• You are extraordinary within your limits, but your limits are extraordinary!
• Silent gratitude isn't very much to anyone.

Gertrude Stein Quotes About Writing

If the communication is perfect, the words have life, and that is all there is to good writing, putting down on the paper words which dance and weep and make love and fight and kiss and perform miracles. — Gertrude Stein

Writing and reading is to me synonymous with existing. — Gertrude Stein

Literature - creative literature - unconcerned with sex, is inconceivable. — Gertrude Stein

A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears. — Gertrude Stein

I write for myself and strangers. The strangers, dear Readers, are an afterthought. — Gertrude Stein

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

I am writing for myself and strangers. This is the only way that I can do it. — Gertrude Stein

To write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write. — Gertrude Stein

it is nice that nobody writes as they talk and that the printed language is different from the spoken otherwise you could not lose yourself in books and of course you do you completely do. — Gertrude Stein

One of the pleasant things those of us who write or paint do is to have the daily miracle. It does come. — Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein Quotes About Love

What is music. A passion for colonies not a love of country. — Gertrude Stein

Romance is everything. — Gertrude Stein

It is very easy to love alone. — Gertrude Stein

Poetry is essentially the discovery, the love, the passion for the name of everything. — Gertrude Stein

I love my love with a b because she is peculiar. — Gertrude Stein

Even the propagandists on the radio find it very difficult to really say let alone believe that the world will be a happy place, of love and peace and plenty, and that the lion will lie down with the lamb and everybody will believe anybody. — Gertrude Stein

I like loving. I like mostly all the ways one can have of having loving feelings in them. Slowly it has come to be in me that any way of being a loving one is interesting and not unpleasant to me. — Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein Quotes About Art

art is the pulse of a nation. — Gertrude Stein

The contemporary thing in art and literature is the thing which doesn't make enough difference to the people of that generation so that they can accept it or reject it. — Gertrude Stein

The creator of the new composition in the arts is an outlaw until he is a classic. — Gertrude Stein

Asparagus in a lean in a lean is to hot. This makes it art and it is wet weather wet weather wet — Gertrude Stein

there is art and there is official art, there always has been and there always will be. — Gertrude Stein

I murmured to Picasso that I liked his portrait of Gertrude Stein. Yes, he said, everybody said that she does not look like it, but that does not make any difference, she will, he said. — Gertrude Stein

Art isn't everything. It's just about everything. — Gertrude Stein

The subject matter of art is life, life as it actually is; but the function of art is to make life better. — Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein Quotes About People

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

I know what Germans are. They are a funny people. They are always choosing someone to lead them in a direction which they do not want to go. — Gertrude Stein

Communists are people who fancied that they had an unhappy childhood. — Gertrude Stein

there are the two sides to a Frenchman, logic and fashion and that is the reason why French people are exciting and peaceful. Logic and fashion. — Gertrude Stein

I simply contend that the middle-class ideal which demands that people be affectionate, respectable, honest and content, that they avoid excitements and cultivate serenity is the ideal that appeals to me, it is in short the ideal of affectionate family life, of honorable business methods. — Gertrude Stein

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

French people do like good fighting, they like it better than anything. — Gertrude Stein

I had always been so much taken with the way all English people I knew always were going to see their lawyer. Even if they have no income and do not earn anything they always have a lawyer. — Gertrude Stein

"Native" always means people who belong someplace else, because they had once belonged somewhere. That shows that the white race does not really think they belong anywhere, because they think of everybody else as native. — Gertrude Stein

Animals in different countries have different expressions just as the people in different countries differ in expression. — Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein Quotes About Answer

What is the answer? In that case, what is the question? — Gertrude Stein

There ain't no answer. There ain't gonna be any answer. There never has been an answer. That's the answer. — Gertrude Stein

What is the answer? she asked, and when no answer came she laughed and said: Then, what is the question? — Gertrude Stein

What is the answer? Silence In that case, what is the question? — Gertrude Stein

Success is the result achieved when nobody answers. — 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

Just before she died she asked, What is the answer? No answer came. She laughed and said, In that case, what is the question? Then she died. — Gertrude Stein

I just tell you and though I dont sound like it I've got plenty of sense, there aint any answer, there aint going to be any answer, there never has been any answer, that's the answer. — Gertrude Stein

As there was never any question there was never any answer. — Gertrude Stein

Suppose no one asked a question. What would the answer be? — Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein Quotes About Century

The nineteenth century was completely lacking in logic, it had cosmic terms and hopes, and aspirations, and discoveries, and ideals but it had no logic. — Gertrude Stein

The nineteenth century believed in science but the twentieth century does not. — Gertrude Stein

The phenomenon of nature is more splendid than the daily events of nature, certainly, so then the twentieth century is splendid. — Gertrude Stein

... there is no point in being realistic about here and now, no use at all not any, and so it is not the nineteenth but the twentieth century, there is no realism now, life is not real it is not earnest, it is strange which is an entirely different matter. — Gertrude Stein

Every adolescent has that dream every century has that dream every revolutionary has that dream, to destroy the family. — Gertrude Stein

I have been the creative literary mind of the century. — Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein Quotes About Genius

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

To complicate things in new ways, that is really very easy; but to see things in new ways, that is difficult and that is why genius is so rare. — 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

Gertrude Stein Quotes About Literature

An audience is always warming but it must never be necessary to your work. — Gertrude Stein

Before the flowers of friendship faded friendship faded. — Gertrude Stein

Argument is to me the air I breathe. Given any proposition, I cannot help believing the other side and defending it. — Gertrude Stein

Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose. — Gertrude Stein

This is the lesson that history teaches: repetition. — Gertrude Stein

A diary means yes indeed. — Gertrude Stein

Action and reaction are equal and opposite. — Gertrude Stein

In France one must adapt oneself to the fragrance of a urinal. — Gertrude Stein

Sculpture is made with two instruments and some supports and pretty air. — Gertrude Stein

It is not what France gave you but what it did not take from you that was important. — Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein Famous Quotes And Sayings

Coffee is real good when you drink it gives you time to think. It's a lot more than just a drink; it's something happening. Not as in hip, but like an event, a place to be, but not like a location, but like somewhere within yourself. It gives you time, but not actual hours or minutes, but a chance to be, like be yourself, and have a second cup. — Gertrude Stein

A very important thing is not to make up your mind that you are any one thing. — Gertrude Stein

Love: the skillful audacity required to share an inner life. — Gertrude Stein

After all everybody, that is, everybody who writes is interested in living inside themselves in order to tell what is inside themselves. That is why writers have to have two countries, the one where they belong and the one in which they live really. The second one is romantic, is is separate from themselves, it is not real but it is really there. — 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

Everybody knows if you are too careful you are so occupied in being careful that you are sure to stumble over something. — Gertrude Stein

It is natural to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes to that siren until she allures us to our death. — Gertrude Stein

What is marriage, is marriage protection or religion, is marriage renunciation or abundance, is marriage a stepping-stone or an end. What is marriage. — Gertrude Stein

Americans are very friendly and very suspicious, that is what Americans are and that is what always upsets the foreigner, who deals with them, they are so friendly how can they be so suspicious they are so suspicious how can they be so friendly but they just are. — 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

I could never be one of two I could never be two in one as married couples do and can, I am but one all one, one and all one, and so I have never been married to any one. — Gertrude Stein

In a war everybody always knows all about Switzerland, in peace times it is just Switzerland but in war time it is the only country that everybody has confidence in, everybody. — 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

When they are alone they want to be with others, and when they are with others they want to be alone. After all, human beings are like that. — Gertrude Stein

You have to know what you want. And if it seems to take you off the track, don't hold back, because perhaps that is instinctively where you want to be. And if you hold back and try to be always where you have been before, you will go dry. — Gertrude Stein

I do want to get rich but I never want to do what there is to do to get rich. — Gertrude Stein

I don't envisage collectivism. There is no such animal, it is always individualism, sometimes the rest vote and sometimes they do not, and if they do they do and if they do not they do not. — Gertrude Stein

War is never fatal but always lost. Always lost. — Gertrude Stein

I have declared that patience is never more than patient. I too have declared, that I who am not patient am patient. — Gertrude Stein

A masterpiece... may be unwelcome but it is never dull. — Gertrude Stein

Nature is commonplace. Imitation is more interesting. — Gertrude Stein

Considering how dangerous everything is, nothing is really very frightening. — Gertrude Stein

Do not forget birthdays. This is in no way a propaganda for a larger population. — 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

There is no such thing as repetition. Only insistance. — Gertrude Stein

It is extraordinary that whole populations have no projects for the future, none at all. It certainly is extraordinary, but it is certainly true. — Gertrude Stein

It is extraordinary that when you are acquainted with a whole family you can forget about them. — Gertrude Stein

If you knew it all it would not be creation but dictation. — Gertrude Stein

Money is always there but the pockets change; it is not in the same pockets after a change, and that is all there is to say about money. — Gertrude Stein

One does not get better but different and older and that is always a pleasure. — 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

You have to know what you want to get it. — Gertrude Stein

Poetry consists in a rhyming dictionary and things seen. — Gertrude Stein

Name any name and then remember everybody you ever knew who bore that name. Are they all alike. I think so. — Gertrude Stein

The deepest thing in any one is the conviction of the bad luck that follows boasting. — Gertrude Stein

When you get there, there isn't any there there. — Gertrude Stein

I've been rich and I've been poor. It's better to be rich. — Gertrude Stein

A real failure does not need an excuse. It is an end in itself. — Gertrude Stein

In the United States there is more space where nobody is than where anybody is. That is what makes America what it is. — Gertrude Stein

Let me listen to me and not to them. — Gertrude Stein

The only thing that is different from one time to another is what is seen and what is seen depends upon how everybody is doing everything. — 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

Everywhere there was somewhere and everywhere there they were men women children dogs cows wild pigs little rabbits cats lizards and animals. That is the way it was. And everybody dogs cats sheep rabbits and lizards and children all wanted to tell ... all about themselves. — Gertrude Stein

Men and girls, men and girls: Artificial swine and pearls. — Gertrude Stein

When I sleep I sleep and do not dream because it is as well that I am what I seem when I am in my bed and dream. — Gertrude Stein

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

Writer or painter god-parents are notoriously unreliable. That is, there is certain before long to be a cooling of friendship. — Gertrude Stein

Since the war nothing is so really frightening not the dark not alone in a room or anything on a road or a dog or a moon but two things, yes, indigestion and high places they are frightening. — Gertrude Stein

The United States is just now the oldest country in the world, there always is an oldest country and she is it, it is she who is the mother of the twentieth century civilization. She began to feel herself as it just after the Civil War. And so it is a country the right age to have been born in and the wrong age to live in. — Gertrude Stein

Disillusionment in living is finding that no one can really ever be agreeing with you completely in anything. — 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 sees it. — Gertrude Stein

It gave me a great notion of the credit of our present government and administration, to find people press as eagerly to pay moneyas they would to receive it; and, at the same time, a due respect for that body of men who have found out so pleasing an expedient for carrying on the common cause, that they have turned a tax into a diversion. — Gertrude Stein

Forget grammar and think about potatoes — 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

I could undertake to be an efficient pupil if it were possible to find an efficient teacher. — Gertrude Stein

One of the things that I discovered in lecturing was that gradually one ceased to hear what one said one heard what the audience hears one say. — Gertrude Stein

It is the soothing thing about history that it does repeat itself. — Gertrude Stein

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

Very likely education does not make very much difference. — Gertrude Stein

But the problem is that when I go around and speak on campuses, I still don't get young men standing up and saying, 'How can I combine career and family?' — Gertrude Stein

Remarks are not literature. — Gertrude Stein

Life Lessons by Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein's work emphasizes the importance of living in the present moment and appreciating the beauty of life. She encourages readers to be open to new experiences and to embrace their own unique identity. Her writings also emphasize the importance of cultivating meaningful relationships and creating a life of purpose and fulfillment.