Gertrude Stein: Doing

Gertrude Stein was American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays. Explore interesting quotes on doing.
Gertrude Stein: 320 quotes25 likes

“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.”

Gertrude Stein

"Poetry and Grammar"
Lectures in America (1935)

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

Gertrude Stein

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

“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.”

Gertrude Stein

"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.”

Gertrude Stein

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

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

Gertrude Stein

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

“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.”

Gertrude Stein

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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“Human nature, human nature acts as it acts when it is identified when there is an identity but it is not human nature that has anything to do with that it is that anybody is there where they are, it is that that has to do with identity, with government and propaganda with history with individualism and with communism but it has nothing nothing to do with the human mind … because the human mind writes what there is and what has identity go to do with that … nothing at all.”

Gertrude Stein

Quoted in Really Reading Gertrude Stein : A Selected Anthology with essays (1989) by Judy Grahn (Crossing Press ISBN 0-895-94380-8, p. 253

“The reason why all of us naturally began to live in France is because France has scientific methods, machines and electricity, but does not really believe that these things have anything to do with the real business of living.”

Gertrude Stein book Paris France

Source: Paris France (1940), p. 8

“There is no pulse so sure of the state of a nation as its characteristic art product which has nothing to do with its material life.”

Gertrude Stein book Paris France

Source: Paris France (1940), p. 12