Gertrude Stein

“It is very easy to love alone.”

“Doing something is interesting to some, if not any one is remembering that that thing has just been done. Doing something is interesting to some if not any one is remembering that any one was one beginning doing some such thing. Doing something is interesting to some when those are remembering that every one has been doing that thing in having been shown that thing. Doing something is interesting to some when they are certain that all having been doing that thing have been completely dead and have not been forgotten. Doing something is interesting to some when they are certain that very many being dead were ones completely doing that thing. Doing things are interesting to some when some one is beginning to be finishing having done that thing. Doing something is interesting to some when they are remembering that every one could be doing that thing. Doing something is interesting to some when they are certain that every one should do that thing.”

“If everyone were not so indolent they would realise that beauty is beauty even when it is irritating and stimulating not only when it is accepted and classic.”

“Sarah Harrell "There is no use there is no use at all in smell, in taste, in teeth, in toast, in anything, there is no use at all and the respect is mutual.”

“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.”

“Sentences are made wonderfully one at a time. Who makes them. Nobody can make them because nobody can what ever they do see.All this makes sentences so clear I know how I like them.What is a sentence mostly what is a sentence. With them a sentence is with us about us all about us we will be willing with what a sentence is. A sentence is that they cannot be carefully there is a doubt about it.The great question is can you think a sentence. What is a sentence. He thought a sentence. Who calls him to come which he did.…What is a sentence. A sentence is a duplicate. An exact duplicate is depreciated. Why is a duplicated sentence not depreciated. Because it is a witness. No witnesses are without value.”

“The more you see how the country is the more you do not wonder why they shut the door. The women do in a way and yet if they did not it would be best.”

“I always say that you cannot tell what a picture really is or what an object really is until you dust it every day and you cannot tell what a book is until you type it or proof-read it. It then does something to you that only reading it never can do.”

“The artist works by locating the world in himself”

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

“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.”

“Literature - creative literature - unconcerned with sex, is inconceivable.”

“So many words to use. Oh do not say that words have a use.”

“Wake a question. Eat an instant, answer”

“A very important thing is not to make up your mind that you are any one thing.”

“I have lived half of my life in Paris, not the half the made me but the half in which I made what I made.”

“I love my love with a b because she is peculiar.”

“I think one is naturally impressed by anything having a beginning a middle and an ending when one is beginning writing and that it is a natural thing because when one is emerging from adolescence, which is really when one first begins writing one feels that one would not have been one emerging from adolescence if there had not been a beginning and a middle and an ending to anything.”

“It is the human habit to think in centuries from a grandparent to a grandchild because it just does take about a hundred years for things to cease to have the same meaning as they did before,”

“twenty-five years run around so quickly but thirty one years is a long time.”

“A rose is a rose is a rose.”

“After all everybody, that is, everybody who writes is interested in living inside themselves in order to tell what is inside themselves. That is why writers have to have two countries, the one where they belong and the one in which they live really. The second one is romantic, is is separate from themselves, it is not real but it is really there.”

“A little artist has all the tragic unhappiness and the sorrows of a great artist and he is not a great artist.”

“After a while I murmured to Picasso that I liked his portrait of Gertrude Stein. Yes, he said, everybody says that she does not look like it but that does not make any difference, she will, he said.”

“If the communication is perfect, the words have life, and that is all there is to good writing, putting down on the paper words which dance and weep and make love and fight and kiss and perform miracles.”

“In the morning there is meaning, in the evening there is feeling.”

“I am I because my little dog knows me.”

“I really do not know that anything has ever been more exciting than diagramming sentences.”

“You look ridiculous if you danceYou look ridiculous if you don't danceSo you might as welldance.”

“Everybody knows if you are too careful you are so occupied in being careful that you are sure to stumble over something. ”

“Why should a sequence of words be anything but a pleasure?”

“There is no reason why a king should be rich or a rich man should be a king, no reason at all.”

“This is the place of places and and it is here.”

“Callous is something that hardening leaves behind what will be soft if there is a genuine interest in there being present as many girls as men. Does this change. It shows that dirt is clean when there is a volume.”

“America is my country, and Paris is my home town.”

“Whenever you get there, there is no there there.”

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

“Anything one does every day is important and imposing and anywhere one lives is interesting and beautiful.”

“Think of anything, of cowboys, of movies, of detective stories, of anybody who goes anywhere or stays at home and is an American and you will realize that it is something strictly American to conceive a space that is filled with moving.”

“The seam in between is fenceless.”

“You are extraordinary within your limits, but your limits are extraordinary!”

“You are all a lost generation.”

“I certainly do care for you Jeff Campbell less than you are always thinking and much more than you are ever knowing”

“If you can do it then why do it?”

“Hope in gates, hope in spoons, hope in doors, hope in tables, no hope in daintiness and determination. Hope in dates.”

“Para uma irlandesa, os Kreder eram um casal avarento e porco. Não tinha a imundície franca, instintiva, combativa, enlameada e maltrapilha que Mary conhecia e podia perdoar e amar. A deles era a imundície alemã da economia, de ser desleixado com o que vestia para poupar as roupas, de economizar nos banhos, de deixar o cabelo oleoso para poupar sabonete e toalhas, de ter as roupas sujas não por opção, as porque era mais barato, de manter a casa fechada e abafada para não gastar com aquecimento, de viver miseravelmente não apenas para economizar dinheiro, mas até para esquecer que o possuíam, trabalhando sem parar não só porque era de sua natureza ou porque precisavam disso, mas porque lhes trazia dinheiro e porque assim evitavam as situações em que podiam gastá-lo.”

“You attract what you need like a lover”

“What is a sentence. A sentence is left to be alright and therefor (sic) they are barely here.A day is additional with there having been with a condition of remaining all day which it is partly that they like to look about made it for them in reference as they knew that is whenever they met by the arrangement which had been made for them in the mean time. What is a sentence. They need not be having them made by them.in 'Sentences' chapter, p. 175 my edition, How to Write.”

“When is there some discharge when. There never is.”

“It takes a heap of loafing to write a book.”