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Quotes from Everybody’s Autobiography — Gertrude Stein

1874–1946 United States

← All quotes by Gertrude Stein

27 quotes

It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.

Everybody’s Autobiography (1937)

Since it could be done what was the use of doing it, and anyway you always have to stop doing something sometime.

Everybody’s Autobiography (1937)

Counting is the religion of this generation it is its hope and its salvation.

Everybody’s Autobiography (1937)

As there was never any question there was never any answer.

Everybody’s Autobiography (1937)

It always did bother me that the American public were more interested in me than in my work.

Everybody’s Autobiography (1937)

Explanations are clear but since no one to whom a thing is explained can connect the explanations with what is really clear, therefore clear explanations are not clear.

Everybody’s Autobiography (1937)

The head-lines which do not head anything they simply replace something but they do not make anything.

Everybody’s Autobiography (1937)

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

Everybody’s Autobiography (1937)

It is a difficult thing to like anybody else's ideas of being funny.

Everybody’s Autobiography (1937)

Anything scares me, anything scares anyone but really after all considering how dangerous everything is nothing is really very frightening.

Everybody’s Autobiography (1937)

And identity is funny being yourself is funny as you are never yourself to yourself except as you remember yourself and then of course you do not believe yourself.

Everybody’s Autobiography (1937)

I rarely believe anything, because at the time of believing I am not really there to believe.

Everybody’s Autobiography (1937)

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

Everybody’s Autobiography (1937)

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.

Everybody’s Autobiography (1937)

Perhaps I am not I even if my little dog knows me but anyway I like what I have and now it is today.

Everybody’s Autobiography (1937)

The two things most men are proudest of is the thing that any man can do and doing does in the same way, that is being drunk and being the father of their son.

Everybody’s Autobiography (1937)

The earth is the earth as a peasant sees it, the world is the world as a duchess sees it, and anyway a duchess would be nothing if the earth was not there as the peasant tills it.

Everybody’s Autobiography (1937)

Everybody thinks that this civilization has lasted a very long time but it really does take very few grandfathers’ granddaughters to take us back to the dark ages.

Everybody’s Autobiography (1937)

If anything is a surprise then there is not much difference between older and younger because the only thing that does make anybody older is that they cannot be surprised.

Everybody’s Autobiography (1937)

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)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Gertrude Stein (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.