Quotes by Gertrude Stein

About Gertrude Stein:

Gertrude Stein was an American writer of novels, poetry and plays. Born in West Allegheny (Pittsburgh), Pennsylvania and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris in 1903, making France her home for the remainder of her life. A literary innovator and pioneer of Modernist literature, Stein’s work broke with the narrative, linear, and temporal conventions of the 19th-century. She was also known as a collector of Modernist art.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.

Gertrude Stein

Action and reaction are equal and opposite.

Gertrude Stein

If you can do it then why do it?

Gertrude Stein

A diary means yes indeed.

Gertrude Stein

To write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write.

Gertrude Stein

Do not forget birthdays. This is in no way a propaganda for a larger population.

Gertrude Stein

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

Gertrude Stein

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

Gertrude Stein

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

Gertrude Stein

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

Gertrude Stein

One of the pleasant things those of us who write or paint do is to have the daily miracle. It does come.

Gertrude Stein

The nineteenth century was completely lacking in logic, it had cosmic terms and hopes, and aspirations, and discoveries, and ideals but it had no logic.

Gertrude Stein

I don't envisage collectivism. There is no such animal, it is always individualism, sometimes the rest vote and sometimes they do not, and if they do they do and if they do not they do not.

Gertrude Stein

You'll be old and you never lived, and you kind of feel silly to lie down and die and to never have lived, to have been a job chaser and never have lived.

Gertrude Stein

I like a view but I like to sit with my back turned to it.

Gertrude Stein

Communists are people who fancied that they had an unhappy childhood.

Gertrude Stein

I think the reason I am important is that I know everything.

Gertrude Stein

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

If you are looking down while you are walking it is better to walk up hill the ground is nearer.

Gertrude Stein

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 t...

Gertrude Stein

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 sees it.

Gertrude Stein

Author Bio

  • NameGertrude Stein
  • DescriptionAmerican art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays
  • BornFebruary 3, 1874
  • DiedJuly 27, 1946
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionWriter; Poet; Art Collector; Salon-holder; Autobiographer; Librettist
  • WorksThree Lives; Tender Buttons: Objects, Food, Rooms; The Making Of Americans; Four Saints In Three Acts; The Autobiography Of Alice B. Toklas; Everybody's Autobiography; Doctor Faustus Lights The Lights