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
She always says she dislikes the abnormal, it is so obvious. She says the normal is so much more simply complicated and interesting.
Nature is commonplace. Imitation is more interesting.
Nothing is more interesting than that something that you eat.
Would I if I could by pushing a button would I kill five thousand Chinamen if I could save my brother from anything. Well I was very fond of my brother and I could completely imagine his suffering and I replied that five thousand Chinamen was something I could not imagine and so it was not interesting. One has to remember that about imagination, that is when the world gets dull when everybody does not know what they can or what they cannot really imagine.
... governing is occupying but not interesting, governments are occupying but not interesting ...
I like loving. I like mostly all the ways one can have of having loving feelings in them. Slowly it has come to be in me that any way of being a loving one is interesting and not unpleasant to me.
The thing that is most interesting about government servants is that they believe what they are supposed to believe, they really do believe what they are supposed to believe.
A saint a real saint never does anything, a martyr does something but a really good saint does nothing, and so I wanted to have Four Saints who did nothing and I wrote the Four Saints In Three Acts and they did nothing and that was everything. Generally speaking anybody is more interesting doing nothing than doing something.
Generally speaking, everyone is more interesting doing nothing than doing anything.
I like a view but I sit with my back turned to it
What was the use of my having come from Oakland, it was not natural to have come from there, yes, write about it if I like or anything, if I like, but not there, there is no there there
Well, she certainly hadn't a fair run for her money.
In the United States there is more space where nobody is than where anybody is. This is what makes America what it is.
In the United States there is more space where nobody is is than where anybody is.