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.
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A village explainer. Excellent if you were a village, but if you were not, not." (on Ezra Pound)

Gertrude Stein

The difference between saints, forget-me-nots, and mountains, have to, have to, have to at a time.

Gertrude Stein

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

Gertrude Stein

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

It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.

Gertrude Stein

I rarely believe anything, because at the time of believing I am not really there to believe.

Gertrude Stein

The thing that differentiates man from animals is money.

Gertrude Stein

Nature is commonplace. Imitation is more interesting.

Gertrude Stein

In a war everybody always knows all about Switzerland, in peace times it is just Switzerland but in war time it is the only country that everybody has confidence in, everybody.

Gertrude Stein

Poetry consists in a rhyming dictionary and things seen.

Gertrude Stein

The nineteenth century believed in science but the twentieth century does not.

Gertrude Stein

I could undertake to be an efficient pupil if it were possible to find an efficient teacher.

Gertrude Stein

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

Gertrude Stein

Men and girls, men and girls: Artificial swine and pearls.

Gertrude Stein

Men cannot count, they do not know that two and two make four if women do not tell them so.

Gertrude Stein

What is marriage, is marriage protection or religion, is marriage renunciation or abundance, is marriage a stepping-stone or an end. What is marriage.

Gertrude Stein

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

Gertrude Stein

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

Gertrude Stein

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

Gertrude Stein

Just as everybody has the vote including women, I think children should, because as a child is conscious of itself then it has to me an existence and has a stake in what happens.

Gertrude Stein

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.

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