Quotes By Gertrude Stein

I like a view but I like to sit with my back turned to it.

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

We are always the same age inside.

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

Hemingway's remarks are not literature.

Nature is commonplace. Imitation is more interesting.

What is the answer? In that case, what is the question?

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

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

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

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.

This is the lesson that history teaches: repetition.

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.

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

Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.

Silent gratitude isn't very much to anyone.

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

Men cannot count, they do not know that two and two make four if women do not tell them so.

A diary means yes indeed.

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

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

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

The thing that differentiates man from animals is money.

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

There is a difference between twenty-nine and thirty. When you are twenty-nine it can be the beginning of everything. When you are thirty it can be the end of everything.

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

Generally speaking, everyone is more interesting doing nothing than doing anything.

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

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.

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