Gertrude Stein Quotes

American author (1874–1946)

Gertrude Stein (3 February 1874 – 27 July 1946) was an American expatriate writer, poet, feminist, and playwright, who lived most of her life in Europe. She is remembered for her "flow-of-thought" and sometimes "cyclical" or "circular" manner of expressing things.

From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Alternative Names: Gertruda Stein • Gertruda Staĭn

From Wikidata (CC0)

Showing quotes in randomized order to avoid selection bias. Click Popular for most popular quotes.

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.

Whenever you get there, there is no there there.

Before the flowers of friendship faded friendship faded.

Is it worse to be scared than to be bored, that is the question.

Repeating then is in every one, in every one their being and their feeling and their way of realizing everything and every one comes out of them in repeating. More and more then every one comes to be clear to some one.

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

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 and they are so suspicious how can they be so friendly but they just are.

Clarity is of no importance because nobody listens and nobody knows what you mean no matter what you mean, nor how clearly you mean what you mean. But if you have vitality enough of knowing enough of what you mean, somebody and sometime and sometimes a great many will have to realize that you know what you mean and so they will agree that you mean what you know, what you know you mean, which is as near as anybody can come to understanding any one.

She says it is a good thing to have no sense of how it is done in the things that amuse you. You should have one absorbing occupation and as for the other things in life for full enjoyment you should only contemplate results. In this way you are bound to feel more about it than those who know a little of how it is done.

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

The whole duty of man consists in being reasonable and just... I am reasonable because I know the difference between understanding and not understanding and I am just because I have no opinion about things I don’t understand.

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

One must dare to be happy.

Considering how dangerous everything is, nothing is really very frightening.

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