Gertrude Stein Zitate

seite 3

„Wir sind drinnen immer gleich alt.“

„Es braucht viel Zeit, ein Genie zu sein, man muss so viel herumsitzen und nichts tun, wirklich nichts tun.“

„Rose ist eine Rose ist eine Rose ist eine Rose.“

„Jeder bekommt den ganzen Tag so viele Informationen, dass er seinen gesunden Menschenverstand verliert.“

„Ich möchte reich werden, aber ich möchte nie das tun, was ich tun muss, um reich zu werden.“

„Angenommen, niemand hat eine Frage gestellt, was wäre die Antwort.“

„Da es nie eine Frage gab, gab es auch keine Antwort.“

„Man muss wagen, glücklich zu sein.“

„Es ist sehr einfach, alleine zu lieben.“

„Sie sind außergewöhnlich innerhalb Ihrer Grenzen, aber Ihre Grenzen sind außergewöhnlich!“

„Wenn Sie alles wüssten, wäre es keine Schöpfung, sondern ein Diktat.“

„Amerika ist mein Land und Paris ist meine Heimatstadt und es ist so, wie es ist.“

„Bevor die Blumen der Freundschaft verblassen, verblasst die Freundschaft.“

„Wenn ich schlafe, schlafe ich und träume nicht, weil es auch so ist, dass ich das bin, was ich scheine, wenn ich in meinem Bett bin und träume.“

„Ich weiß wirklich nicht, dass irgendetwas aufregender war als das Zeichnen von Sätzen.“

„Alles, was man jeden Tag tut, ist wichtig und imposant und überall dort, wo man lebt, ist es interessant und schön.“

„Am Morgen gibt es Sinn, am Abend gibt es Gefühl.“

„Jede jeder beschließt dass keine keiner etwas erfährt selbst wenn jede jeder es weiß“

„Einstein war der schöpferische Geist der Philosophie des Jahrhunderts und ich war der schöpferische Geist der Literatur des Jahrhunderts.“

„Kommunisten sind Leute, die sich einbilden, sie hätten eine unglückliche Kindheit gehabt.“

„Warum sollte eine Folge von Wörtern alles andere als ein Vergnügen sein?“

„Es gibt keine Wiederholung. Nur der Widerstand.“

„Ein Meisterstück… mag unerwünscht sein, aber es ist niemals langweilig.“

„Damen, es gibt keine neutrale Position, die wir einnehmen könnten.“

„Das 19. Jahrhundert glaubte an die Wissenschaft, das 20. Jahrhundert nicht.“

„Romantik ist alles.“

„Es ist das Beruhigende an der Geschichte, dass sie sich wiederholt.“

„Es war nicht wichtig, was Frankreich dir gegeben hat, sondern was es dir nicht genommen hat.“

„Es ist immer ein Fehler, einfach gesprochen zu werden.“

„Die ganze Welt kann weinen, aber nicht die ganze Welt kann seufzen. Seufzen ist extra.“

„Der Künstler lokalisiert die Welt in sich.“

„Die Überschriften, die nichts anführen, ersetzen einfach etwas, machen aber nichts.“

„Die Familie ist immer die Familie, aber in den Ferien ist es eine Großfamilie und das ist anstrengend.“

„Ich war reich und arm. Es ist besser, reich zu sein.“

„Ihr seid alle eine verlorene Generation.“

„Jeder weiß, wenn du zu vorsichtig bist, bist du so damit beschäftigt, vorsichtig zu sein, dass du sicher über etwas stolpern wirst.“

„Ein kleiner Künstler hat all das tragische Unglück und die Leiden eines großen Künstlers und er ist kein großer Künstler.“

„Sie müssen wissen, was Sie wollen, um es zu bekommen.“

„Dies ist der Ort der Orte und es ist hier.“

“Repeating then is in every one, in every one their being and their feeling and their way of realizing everything and every one comes out of them in repeating. More and more then every one comes to be clear to some one.”

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

“Now they can do the radio in so many languages that nobody any longer dreams of a single language, and there should not any longer be dreams of conquest because the globe is all one, anybody can hear everything and everybody can hear the same thing, so what is the use of conquering.”

“Grammar little by little is not a thing. Which may gain.
There. Make twenty-five be a woman. The meaning of that does not interest me. It is a complexion that interests that makes ridiculous because that does not make it something else. But it does make them which is again me.
Make twenty-five be a woman. I do not lose it. The color is there. Do you see. Dependent entirely upon how one word follows another. Who knows how Howard likes hearing. I can do it so easily it always makes grammar but is it grammar. Forget grammar and think about potatoes. Grammar after all has to do with why they were presented.”

“The minute you or anybody else knows what you are you are not it, you are what you or anybody else knows you are and as everything in living is made up of finding out what you are it is extraordinarily difficult really not to know what you are and yet to be that thing.”

“It is hard living down the tempers we are born with. We all begin well, for in our youth there is nothing we are more intolerant of than our own sins writ large in others and we fight them fiercely in ourselves; but we grow old and we see that these our sins are of all sins the really harmless ones to own, nay that they give a charm to any character, and so our struggle with them dies away.”

“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.”

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

“Do you know because I tell you so, or do you know, do you know.”

“It is funny that men who are supposed to be scientific cannot get themselves to realize the basic principle of physics, that action and reaction are equal and opposite, that when you persecute people you always rouse them to be strong and stronger.”

“A writer must always try to have a philosophy and he should also have a psychology and a philology and many other things. Without a philosophy and a psychology and all these various other things he is not really worthy of being called a writer. I agree with Kant and Schopenhauer and Plato and Spinoza and that is quite enough to be called a philosophy. But then of course a philosophy is not the same thing as a style.”

“A vegetable garden in the beginning looks so promising and then after all little by little it grows nothing but vegetables, nothing, nothing but vegetables.”

“The family is always the family but during vacations it is an extended family and that is exhausting”

“I am writing for myself and strangers. This is the only way that I can do it. Everybody is a real one to me, everybody is like some one else too to me. No one of them that I know can want to know it and so I write for myself and strangers.”

“A nice war is a war where everybody who is heroic is a hero, and everybody more or less is a hero in a nice war. Now this war is not at all a nice war.”

“It bothers a lot of people, but like you said, it's nobody's business, it came from the Judeo-Christian ethos, especially Saint Paul the bastard, but he was complaining about youngsters who were not really that way, they did it for money, everybody suspects us or knows but nobody says anything about it.”

“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.”

“Ladies there is no neutral position for us to assume.”

“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.”

“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 and they are so suspicious how can they be so friendly but they just are.”

“After all human beings have to live dogs too so as not to know that time is passing, that is the whole business of living to go on so they will not know that time is passing, that is why they get drunk that is why they like to go to war, during a war there is the most complete absence of the sense that time is passing a year of war lasts so much longer than any other year. After all that is what life is and that is the reason there is no Utopia, little or big young or old dog or man everybody wants every minute so filled that they are not conscious of that minute passing. It's just as well they do not think about it you have to be a genius to live in it and know it to exist in it and express it to accept it and deny it by creating it.”

“Nothing could bother me more than the way a thing goes dead once it has been said.”

“Writers only think they are interested in politics, they are not really, it gives them a chance to talk and writers like to talk but really no real writer is really interested in politics.”

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

“When you are writing before there is an audience anything written is as important as any other thing and you cherish anything and everything that you have written. After the audience begins, naturally they create something that is they create you, and so not everything is so important, something is more important than another thing.”

“Let me recite what history teaches. History teaches.”

“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.”

“A saint is one to be for two when three and you make five and two and cover.
A at most.
Saint saint a saint.”

“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.”