Gertrude Stein Zitate

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„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.“

“The surrealists still see things as everyone sees them, they complicate them in a different way but the vision is that of everyone else, in short the complication is the complication of the twentieth century but the vision is that of the nineteenth century. Picasso only sees something else, another reality. Complications are always easy but another vision than that of all the world is very rare.”

“When General Osborne came to see me just after the victory, he asked me what I thought should be done to educate the Germans. I said there is only one thing to be done and that is to teach them disobedience, as long as they are obedient so long sooner or later they will be ordered about by a bad man and there will be trouble. Teach them disobedience, I said, make every German child know that it is its duty at least once a day to do its good deed and not believe something its father or its teacher tells them, confuse their minds, get their minds confused and perhaps then they will be disobedient and the world will be at peace. The obedient peoples go to war, disobedient people like peace, that is the reason that Italy did not really become a good Axis, the people were not obedient enough, the Japs and the Germans are the only really obedient people on earth and see what happens, teach them disobedience, confuse their minds, teach them disobedience, and the world can be peaceful. General Osborne shook his head sadly, you'll never make the heads of an army understand that.”

“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.”

“Argument is to me the air I breathe. Given any proposition, I cannot help believing the other side and defending it.”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

“Adventure is making the distant approach nearer but romance is having what is where it is which is not where you are stay where it is.”

“When I sleep I sleep and do not dream because it is as well that I am what I seem when I am in my bed and dream.”

“One of the things that is most striking about the young generation is that they never talk about their own futures, there are no futures for this generation, not any of them and so naturally they never think of them. It is very striking, they do not live in the present they just live, as well as they can, and they do not plan. It is extraordinary that whole populations have no projects for a future, none at all. It certainly is extraordinary, but it is certainly true.”

“Propaganda is not French, it is not civilized to want other people to believe what you believe because the essence of being civilised is to possess yourself as you are, and if you possess yourself as you are you of course cannot possess any one else, it is not your business.”

“The nineteenth century believed in science but the twentieth century does not.”

“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.”

“They wanted to know how I succeeded in getting so much publicity, I said by having a small audience, I said if you have a big audience you have no publicity, this did seem to worry them and naturally it would worry them they wanted the publicity and the big audience, and really to have the biggest publicity you have to have a small one, yes all right the biggest publicity comes from the realest poetry and the realest poetry has a small audience not a big one, but it is really exciting and therefore it has the biggest publicity, all right that is it.”

“Picasso once remarked I do not care who it is that has or does influence me as long as it is not myself.”

“The difference between a thinker and a newspaperman is that a thinker enters right into things, a newspaperman is superficial.”

“Poetry is I say essentially a vocabulary just as prose is essentially not. And what is the vocabulary of which poetry absolutely is. It is a vocabulary based on the noun as prose is essentially and determinately and vigorously not based on the noun. Poetry is concerned with using with abusing, with losing with wanting with denying with avoiding with adoring with replacing the noun. It is doing that always doing that, doing that doing nothing but that. Poetry is doing nothing but using losing refusing and pleasing and betraying and caressing nouns. That is what poetry does, that is what poetry has to do no matter what kind of poetry it is. And there are a great many kinds of poetry. So that is poetry really loving the name of anything and that is not prose.”

“If you do not remember while you are writing, it may seem confused to others but actually it is clear and eventually that clarity will be clear, that is what a master-piece is, but if you remember while you are writing it will seem clear at the time to any one but the clarity will go out of it that is what a master-piece is not.”

“Gertrude Stein, in her work, has always been possessed by the intellectual passion for exactitude in the description of the inner and outer reality. She has reproduced simplification by this concentration, and as a result the destruction of associational emotion in poetry and prose. She knows that beauty, music, decoration, the result of emotion should never be the cause, even events should never be the cause of emotion nor should they be the material of poetry or prose. Nor should emotion itself be the cause of poetry and prose. They should consist of an exact reproduction of either an outer or inner reality.”

“A creator is not in advance of his generation but he is the first of his contemporaries to be conscious of what is happening to his generation.
A creator who creates, who is not an academician, who is not someone who studies in a school where the rules are already known, and of course being known they no longer exist, a creator then who creates is necessarily of his generation. His generation lives in its contemporary way but they only live in it. In art, in literature, in the theatre, in short in everything that does not contribute to their immediate comfort they live in the preceding generation.”

“It often makes me know that as a cousin of mine once said about money, money is always there but the pockets change; it is not in the same pockets after a change, and that is all there is to say about money.”

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

“The idea of enemies is awful it makes one stop remembering eternity and the fear of death. That is what enemies are. Possessions are the same as enemies only less so, they too make one forget eternity and the fear of death.”

“The creator of the new composition in the arts is an outlaw until he is a classic.”

“All the world knows how to cry but not all the world knows how to sigh. Sighing is extra.”

“No sense in no sense innocence of what of not and what of delight. In no sense innocence in no sense and what in delight and not, in no sense innocence in no sense no sense what, in no sense and delight, and in no sense and delight and not in no sense and delight and not, no sense in no sense innocence and delight.”

“A novel is what you dream in your night sleep. A novel is not waking thoughts although it is written and thought with waking thoughts. But really a novel goes as dreams go in sleeping at night and some dreams are like anything and some dreams are like something and some dreams change and some dreams are quiet and some dreams are not. And some dreams are just what any one would do only a little different always just a little different and that is what a novel is.”

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