Gertrude Stein

"What is the use of being a little boy if you are going to grow up to be a man."

"You are you, because your little dog knows you, but of course that is what doing nothing is."

"One cannot spend one's time in being modern when there are so many more amusing things to do."

"The difference between me and the surrealists is that I am a surrealist."

"Action and reaction are equal and opposite directions."

"Genius is in the approach."

"I have no religion but I love flowers."

"Anything that bores you is boring."

"Listening is very bad for people. One should talk and talk."

"A vegetable garden in the beginning looks so promises and then after all little by little it grows."

"In these days one can say that the writer writes in order to write."

"The war, well, well, it was a war."

"Civilization is not inherited; it has to be learned and earned by each generation anew."

"What is writing but a way of looking at things."

"I met Apollinaire when I first went to Paris and he was very exciting."

"You can't enforce good will. It has to be spontaneous."

"Craftsmanship is the enemy of art."

"Some people are willing to keep the mind in storage."

"Very likely education is the most beautiful thing in the world."

"Think of the Bible and Homer and think of the things written in the last two thousand years."

"I like talking to myself better than to anybody else."

"The creator made Italy from designs by Michelangelo."

"I sought to find whether blue and green will be more beautiful together than green and pink."

"There is no such thing as repetition. Only insistence."

"Some people all their lives avoid their own company."

"The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong in the broken places."

"I am the author and the only authority on it."

"Before the flowers of friendship faded friendship faded."

"I want readers to think about what I am writing while they are reading."

"An artist must be brave with form."