Gertrude Stein: Trending quotes

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Gertrude Stein: 320 quotes25 likes

“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.”

Before the Flowers of Friendship Faded Friendship Faded (1931)

“One of the things that is most striking about the young generation is that they never talk about their own futures, there are no futures for this generation, not any of them and so naturally they never think of them. It is very striking, they do not live in the present they just live, as well as they can, and they do not plan. It is extraordinary that whole populations have no projects for a future, none at all. It certainly is extraordinary, but it is certainly true.”

Wars I Have Seen (1945)

“Propaganda is not French, it is not civilized to want other people to believe what you believe because the essence of being civilised is to possess yourself as you are, and if you possess yourself as you are you of course cannot possess any one else, it is not your business.”

Gertrude Stein book Paris France

Source: Paris France (1940), p. 56

“The nineteenth century believed in science but the twentieth century does not.”

Wars I Have Seen (1945)

“When I said. "A rose is a rose is a rose." And then later made that into a ring I made poetry and what did I do? I caressed completely caressed and addressed a noun.”

"Poetry and Grammar"
Lectures in America (1935)

“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.”

Source: Everybody’s Autobiography (1937), Ch. 4

“Picasso once remarked I do not care who it is that has or does influence me as long as it is not myself.”

What Are Masterpieces and Why Are There So Few of Them (1936)

“The difference between a thinker and a newspaperman is that a thinker enters right into things, a newspaperman is superficial.”

What Are Masterpieces and Why Are There So Few of Them (1936), Afterword of a later edition

“Poetry is I say essentially a vocabulary just as prose is essentially not. And what is the vocabulary of which poetry absolutely is. It is a vocabulary based on the noun as prose is essentially and determinately and vigorously not based on the noun. Poetry is concerned with using with abusing, with losing with wanting with denying with avoiding with adoring with replacing the noun. It is doing that always doing that, doing that doing nothing but that. Poetry is doing nothing but using losing refusing and pleasing and betraying and caressing nouns. That is what poetry does, that is what poetry has to do no matter what kind of poetry it is. And there are a great many kinds of poetry. So that is poetry really loving the name of anything and that is not prose.”

"Poetry and Grammar"
Lectures in America (1935)

“If you do not remember while you are writing, it may seem confused to others but actually it is clear and eventually that clarity will be clear, that is what a master-piece is, but if you remember while you are writing it will seem clear at the time to any one but the clarity will go out of it that is what a master-piece is not.”

What Are Masterpieces and Why Are There So Few of Them (1936)

“Gertrude Stein, in her work, has always been possessed by the intellectual passion for exactitude in the description of the inner and outer reality. She has reproduced simplification by this concentration, and as a result the destruction of associational emotion in poetry and prose. She knows that beauty, music, decoration, the result of emotion should never be the cause, even events should never be the cause of emotion nor should they be the material of poetry or prose. Nor should emotion itself be the cause of poetry and prose. They should consist of an exact reproduction of either an outer or inner reality.”

Gertrude Stein book The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

Source: The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933), p. 259

“A creator is not in advance of his generation but he is the first of his contemporaries to be conscious of what is happening to his generation.
A creator who creates, who is not an academician, who is not someone who studies in a school where the rules are already known, and of course being known they no longer exist, a creator then who creates is necessarily of his generation. His generation lives in its contemporary way but they only live in it. In art, in literature, in the theatre, in short in everything that does not contribute to their immediate comfort they live in the preceding generation.”

Gertrude Stein Picasso

Picasso (1938)

“It often makes me know that as a cousin of mine once said about money, 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.”

Source: Wars I Have Seen (1945), p. 27

“Since it could be done what was the use of doing it, and anyway you always have to stop doing something sometime.”

Source: Everybody’s Autobiography (1937), Ch. 4

“The idea of enemies is awful it makes one stop remembering eternity and the fear of death. That is what enemies are. Possessions are the same as enemies only less so, they too make one forget eternity and the fear of death.”

Wars I Have Seen (1945)

“The creator of the new composition in the arts is an outlaw until he is a classic.”

Composition as Explanation (1926)

“All the world knows how to cry but not all the world knows how to sigh. Sighing is extra.”

Mrs. Reynolds and Five Earlier Novelettes (1952) Pt. 1 (written 1940-1943)

“No sense in no sense innocence of what of not and what of delight. In no sense innocence in no sense and what in delight and not, in no sense innocence in no sense no sense what, in no sense and delight, and in no sense and delight and not in no sense and delight and not, no sense in no sense innocence and delight.”

"Are There Arithmetics" (28 May 1927) [written in 1923]

“A novel is what you dream in your night sleep. A novel is not waking thoughts although it is written and thought with waking thoughts. But really a novel goes as dreams go in sleeping at night and some dreams are like anything and some dreams are like something and some dreams change and some dreams are quiet and some dreams are not. And some dreams are just what any one would do only a little different always just a little different and that is what a novel is.”

"The Superstitions of Fred Anneday, Annday, Anday; a Novel of Real Life" (1935)
How Writing Is Written: Previously Uncollected Writings, vol.II (1974)

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

Source: Everybody’s Autobiography (1937), Ch. 5