“To quote the only line of Gertrude Stein’s which I have ever been able to understand, “It is wonderful how I am not interested.””

—  Dorothy Parker

Source: Dorothy Parker: Complete Broadway, 1918–1923 (2014) https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25758762M/Dorothy_Parker_Complete_Broadway_1918-1923, Chapter 2: 1919, p. 64

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 14, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "To quote the only line of Gertrude Stein’s which I have ever been able to understand, “It is wonderful how I am not int…" by Dorothy Parker?
Dorothy Parker photo
Dorothy Parker 172
American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist 1893–1967

Related quotes

Sylvia Plath photo

“I wonder about all the roads not taken and am moved to quote Frost… but won't. It is sad to be able only to mouth
other poets. I want someone to mouth me.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer
Herman Kruyder photo

“Only now I see what I am capable of and I don't understand that I have been able to make this canvas in my small front room.”

Herman Kruyder (1881–1935) Dutch painter

translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018

(version in original Dutch / origineel citaat van Herman Kruyder:) Nu pas zie ik waartoe ik in staat ben en ik begrijp niet dat ik het doek in mijn kleine voorkamer [1928, in Blaricum] heb kunnen maken.

Kruyder, c. 1931; as quoted by Regnault in his Memories; as cited in Herman Kruyder 1881 – 1935: gedoemde scheppingen, ed. Mabel Hoogendonk; (ISBN 90-400-9905-7), Waanders, Zwolle 1997, p. 30

Kruyder's reaction after seeing his own painting 'Groot landschap uit Limburg' hanging in a large room of the house of his art-buyer P.A. Regnault
dated quotes

“‘ He doesn't understand. The navy is my life. My only life, now. The war will not last for ever, but until it ends I shall stand in the line-of-battle as I have been entrusted to!’”

Douglas Reeman (1924–2017) British author

For My Country's Freedom, Cap 13 "Loneliness"

Werner Herzog photo

“I am someone who takes everything very literally. I simply do not understand irony, a defect I have had ever since I was able to think independently.”

Werner Herzog (1942) German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor and opera director

Herzog on Herzog (2002)

“I saw my earlier selves as different people, acquaintances I had outgrown. I wondered how I could ever have been some of them.”

Roger Zelazny The Courts of Chaos

Source: The Courts of Chaos

Frantz Fanon photo

“I am black: I am the incarnation of a complete fusion with the world, an intuitive understanding of the earth, an abandonment of my ego in the heart of the cosmos, and no white man, no matter how intelligent he may be, can ever understand Louis Armstrong and the music of the Congo. If I am black, it is not the result of a curse, but it is because, having offered my skin, I have been anle to absorb all the cosmic efflucia.”

Frantz Fanon book Black Skin, White Masks

I am truly a ray of sunlight under the earth...
Source: Black Skin, White Masks (1952), Ch. 2

William Joyce photo

“I know that I have been denounced as a traitor and I resent the accusation, as I conceive myself to have been guilty of no underhand or deceitful act against Britain, although I am also able to understand the resentment that my broadcasts have, in many quarters, aroused.”

William Joyce (1906–1946) British fascist and propaganda broadcaster

J.W. Hall (ed.), The Trial of William Joyce (Notable British Trials series, William Hodge & Co, 1946), p. 58
Statement given by Joyce under caution, 31 May 1945.

Rush Limbaugh photo

“I have outlived the diagnosis, I’ve been able to receive and hear and process some of the most wonderful, nice things about me that I might not have ever heard had I not gotten sick. Again think, how many people who pass away never hear the eulogies, never hear the thank-yous? I’ve been very lucky, folks, in I can’t tell you how many ways.”

Rush Limbaugh (1951) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, author, and television personality

2020s, I’ve Had a Year to Think About What’s Important (2020)

Margaret Mead photo

“!-- This is my most misunderstood book, and I have devoted some attention to trying to understand why. … --> I have been accused of having believed when I wrote Sex and Temperament that there are no sex differences … This, many readers felt, was too much. It was too pretty. I must have found what I was looking for. But this misconception comes from a lack of understanding of what anthropology means, of the open-mindedness with which one must look and listen, record in astonishment and wonder, that which one would not have been able to guess.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Preface of 1950 edition of Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935), p. xxvi <!-- ; 1977 editon, p. ix -->
[Anthropology demands] the open-mindedness with which one must look and listen, record in astonishment and wonder that which one would not have been able to guess.
As quoted in Gaither's Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (2012) by Carl C. Gaither and Alma E. Cavazos-Gaither<!-- cited in Coming of Age in Second Life : An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human (2010) by Tom Boellstorff, p. 71 -->
1950s

Richard Feynman photo

“There are all kinds of interesting questions that come from a knowledge of science, which only adds to the excitement and mystery and awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts.”

Richard Feynman book What Do You Care What Other People Think?

"The Making of a Scientist," p. 11: video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEwUwWh5Xs4&t=26s
What Do You Care What Other People Think? (1988)
Context: I have a friend who's an artist, and he sometimes takes a view which I don't agree with. He'll hold up a flower and say, "Look how beautiful it is," and I'll agree. But then he'll say, "I, as an artist, can see how beautiful a flower is. But you, as a scientist, take it all apart and it becomes dull." I think he's kind of nutty. … There are all kinds of interesting questions that come from a knowledge of science, which only adds to the excitement and mystery and awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts.

Related topics