104 quotes
We are always the same age inside.
I was talking like this to the Princeton professor and he said well if these are the facts there is no hope and I said well what is hope hope is just contact with the facts.
Everybody’s Autobiography (1937)
Human beings are interested in two things. They are interested in the reality and interested in telling about it.
What Are Masterpieces and Why Are There So Few of Them (1936)
In the United States there is more space where nobody is than where anybody is. This is what makes America what it is.
The Geographical History of America (1936)
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.
Paris France (1940)
I like a thing simple but it must be simple through complication. Everything must come into your scheme, otherwise you cannot achieve real simplicity.
What Are Masterpieces and Why Are There So Few of Them (1936)
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.
How Writing Is Written: Previously Uncollected Writings, vol.II (1974)
From the very nature of progress, all ages must be transitional. If they were not, the world would be at a stand-still and death would speedily ensue. It is one of the tamest of platitudes but it is always introduced by a flourish of trumpets.
Nothing could bother me more than the way a thing goes dead once it has been said.
What Are Masterpieces and Why Are There So Few of Them (1936)
And so I am an American and I have lived half my life in Paris, not the half that made me but the half in which I made what I made.
An American and France (1936)
All of you young people who served in the war. You are a lost generation... You have no respect for anything. You drink yourselves to death.
Statement quoted by Ernest Hemingway in A Moveable Feast (1964)
A master-piece … may be unwelcome but it is never dull.
What Are Masterpieces and Why Are There So Few of Them (1936)
When I said. "A rose is a rose is a rose." And then later made that into a ring I made poetry and what did I do? I caressed completely caressed and addressed a noun.
Lectures in America (1935)
Growing has no connection with audience.
Audience has no connection with identity.
Identity has no connection with a universe.
A universe has no connection with human nature.
The Geographical History of America (1936)
I just tell you and though I dont sound like it I've got plenty of sense, there aint any answer, there aint going to be any answer, there never has been any answer, that’s the answer.
Brewsie and Willie (1946)
One of the pleasant things those of us who write or paint do is to have the daily miracle. It does come.
Paris France (1940)
A real failure does not need an excuse. It is an end in itself.
Four in America (1933)
For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling.
Composition as Explanation (1926)
If the stars are suns and the earth is the earth and there are men only upon this earth and anything can put an end to anything and any dog does anything like anybody does it what is the difference between eternity and anything.
Everybody’s Autobiography (1937)
Alice Toklas' father had almost once had an oil well they dug and dug but naturally the oil did not gush, naturally not these things never do happen to any one one knows, if it could happen to them you would not be very likely to know them most naturally not.
Everybody’s Autobiography (1937)