Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Steinwas an American novelist, poet, playwright and art collector. Born in the Allegheny West neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris in 1903, and made France her home for the remainder of her life. She hosted a Paris salon, where the leading figures in modernism in literature and art would meet, such as Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Ezra Pound, and Henri Matisse...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth3 February 1874
CityPittsburgh, PA
CountryUnited States of America
Gertrude Stein quotes about
Don't write about what you don't know even if you don't know it.
I tell you old and young are better than tired middle-aged, nothing is so dead dead-tired, dead every way as middle-aged.
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.
More and more I like to take a train. I understand why the French prefer it to automobiling it is so much more sociable, and of course these days so much more of an adventure, and the irregularity of its regularity is fascinating.
Is money money or isn't money money. Everybody who earns it and spends it every day in order to live knows that money is money, anybody who votes it to be gathered in as taxes knows money is not money. That is what makes everybody go crazy.... When you earn money and spend money every day anybody can know the difference between a million and three. But when you vote money away there really is not any difference between a million and three.
French people do like good fighting, they like it better than anything.
Argument is to me the air I breathe.
Adventure is making the distant approach nearer but romance is having what is where it is which is not where you are stay where it is.
... governing is occupying but not interesting, governments are occupying but not interesting ...
F. Scott Fitzgerald is the first of the last generation.
There are of course people who are more important than others in that they have more importance in the world but this is not essential and it ceases to be. I have no sense of difference in this respect because every human being comprises the combination form.
Men ... are so conservative, so selfish, so boresome, and ... they are so ugly, and ... they are gullible, anybody can convince them.
Eating too much meat gives you indigestion and evil thoughts make you eat too much meat.
... to know what one knows is frightening to live what one lives is soothing and though everybody likes to be frightened what they really have to have is soothing ...