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Gertrude Stein: 320 quotes25 likes

“I was clear, Alice Toklas says and very often mistaken but anyway I am clear I am a good American, I am slow-minded and quickly clear in expression, I am certain that I see everything that is seen and in between I stand around but I do not wait, no American can wait he can stand around and do nothing but he cannot wait, that is why he is not like Milton who served by standing and waiting, Americans can neither serve nor wait, they can stand and sit down and get up and walk around but they can neither serve nor wait.”

Gertrude Stein

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

“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

Source: Everybody’s Autobiography (1937), Ch. 3

“The thing that is most interesting about government servants is that they believe what they are supposed to believe, they really do believe what they are supposed to believe.”

Gertrude Stein

Wars I Have Seen (1945)

“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

Source: Everybody’s Autobiography (1937), Ch. 2

“Growing has no connection with audience.
Audience has no connection with identity.
Identity has no connection with a universe.
A universe has no connection with human nature.”

Gertrude Stein

The Geographical History of America (1936)

“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

Source: Everybody’s Autobiography (1937), Ch. 2

“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

Source: Everybody’s Autobiography (1937), Ch. 2

“It is always a mistake to be plain-spoken.”

Gertrude Stein

"As Eighty," from Bee Time Vine (1953, Yale University Press); written in 1923

“I dislike it when instead of saying Jew they say Hebrew or Israelite, or Semite, I do not like it and why should a Negro want to be called colored. Why should we want to lose being a Negro… I have stated that a noun to me is a stupid thing, if you know a thing and its name why bother about it but you have to know its name to talk about it. Well its name is Negro if it is a Negro and Jew if it is a Jew and both of them are nice strong names and so let us keep them.”

Gertrude Stein

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

“It is not what France gave you but what it did not take from you that was important.”

Gertrude Stein

An American and France (1936)

“Clarity is of no importance because nobody listens and nobody knows what you mean no matter what you mean, nor how clearly you mean what you mean. But if you have vitality enough of knowing enough of what you mean, somebody and sometime and sometimes a great many will have to realize that you know what you mean and so they will agree that you mean what you know, what you know you mean, which is as near as anybody can come to understanding any one.”

Gertrude Stein

Four in America (1933)

“She took us to see her granddaughter who was teaching in the Dominican convent in San Raphael, we went across the bay on a ferry, that had not changed but Goat Island might just as well not have been there, anyway 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.”

Gertrude Stein

Source: Everybody’s Autobiography (1937), Ch. 4, p. 289

“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

Brewsie and Willie (1946), Ch. 7

“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 tills it.”

Gertrude Stein

Source: Everybody’s Autobiography (1937), Ch.2

“It is the soothing thing about history that it does repeat itself.”

Gertrude Stein

Wars I Have Seen (1945)

“I like a thing simple but it must be simple through complication. Everything must come into your scheme, otherwise you cannot achieve real simplicity.”

Gertrude Stein

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

“As there was never any question there was never any answer.”

Gertrude Stein

Source: Everybody’s Autobiography (1937), Ch.1

“War is never fatal but always lost. Always lost.”

Gertrude Stein

Wars I Have Seen (1945)

“Remarks are not literature.”

Gertrude Stein book The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

Comment to Ernest Hemingway, Ch. 7
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933)

“The whole duty of man consists in being reasonable and just… I am reasonable because I know the difference between understanding and not understanding and I am just because I have no opinion about things I don’t understand.”

Gertrude Stein

Manuscript (1903), published in Q.E.D. Book 1, from Q.E.D., and Other Early Writings (1971)