Quotes By Gertrude Stein

A vegetable garden in the beginning looks so promising and then after all little by little it grows nothing but vegetables, nothing, nothing but vegetables.

A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears.

That is what war is and dancing it is forward and back, when one is out walking one wants not to go back the way they came but in dancing and in war it is forward and back.

I've been rich and I've been poor. It's better to be rich.

There ain't no answer. There ain't gonna be any answer. There never has been an answer. That's the answer.

A real failure does not need an excuse. It is an end in itself.

Human beings are interested in two things. They are interested in the reality and interested in telling about it.

I have always noticed that in portraits of really great writers the mouth is always firmly closed.

The deepest thing in any one is the conviction of the bad luck that follows boasting.

Supposing everyone lived at one time what would they say. They would observe that stringing string beans is universal.

But the problem is that when I go around and speak on campuses, I still don't get young men standing up and saying, 'How can I combine career and family?'

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

Do you know because I tell you so, or do you know, do you know.

In the United States there is more space where nobody is than where anybody is. That is what makes America what it is.

An audience is always warming but it must never be necessary to your work.

A house in the country is not the same as a country house.

Americans are very friendly and very suspicious, that is what Americans are and that is what always upsets the foreigner, who deals with them, they are so friendly how can they be so suspicious they are so suspicious how can they be so friendly but they just are.

Very likely education does not make very much difference.

If you can do it then why do it?

Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.

Remarks are not literature.

What is music. A passion for colonies not a love of country.

One does not get better but different and older and that is always a pleasure.

I have declared that patience is never more than patient. I too have declared, that I who am not patient am patient.

Let me listen to me and not to them.

Oh, I wish I were a miser; being a miser must be so occupying.

Argument is to me the air I breathe. Given any proposition, I cannot help believing the other side and defending it.

When they are alone they want to be with others, and when they are with others they want to be alone. After all, human beings are like that.

I know what Germans are. They are a funny people. They are always choosing someone to lead them in a direction which they do not want to go.

It is awfully important to know what is and what is not your business.