Gertrude Stein

Disillusionment in living is finding that no one can really ever be agreeing with you completely in anything.

The nineteenth century was completely lacking in logic, it had cosmic terms and hopes, and aspirations, and discoveries, and ideals but it had no logic.

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

This is the lesson that history teaches: repetition.

I've been rich and I've been poor. It's better to be rich.

Remarks are not literature.

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

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

It is awfully important to know what is and what is not your business.

Hemingway's remarks are not literature.

What is music. A passion for colonies not a love of country.

Generally speaking, everyone is more interesting doing nothing than doing anything.

I don't envisage collectivism. There is no such animal, it is always individualism, sometimes the rest vote and sometimes they do not, and if they do they do and if they do not they do not.

There is no such thing as being good to your wife.

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

One of the pleasant things those of us who write or paint do is to have the daily miracle. It does come.

A masterpiece... may be unwelcome but it is never dull.

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

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

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