Gertrude Stein Quotes about Literature

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

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

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

I have always noticed that in portraits of really great writers the mouth is always firmly closed.

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

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

This is the lesson that history teaches: repetition.

The thing that differentiates man from animals is money.

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

Action and reaction are equal and opposite.

Generally speaking anybody is more interesting doing nothing than doing anything.

A diary means yes indeed.

It is extraordinary that whole populations have no projects for the future, none at all. It certainly is extraordinary, but it is certainly true.

War is never fatal but always lost. Always lost.

In France one must adapt oneself to the fragrance of a urinal.

It is not what France gave you but what it did not take from you that was important.

There is no real reality to a really imagined life any more.

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

Every adolescent has that dream every century has that dream every revolutionary has that dream, to destroy the family.

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

I do want to get rich but I never want to do what there is to do to get rich.

What is the answer? In that case, what is the question?

Money is always there but the pockets change; it is not in the same pockets after a change, and that is all there is to say about money.

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

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