Gertrude Stein

“ Lumber is not brick and brick is redder. The path of a rug is that which is not returned. Enough has been put that way.
Pile on more potatoes than corn-meal and more sausage than chicken and a little more tender oil than egg and all the eggs are fresh. So fresh and fair is no behaviour when the whole thing has disappeared. A taste and a branch and a sucking of the day and the calm and the man and the noise so wettingly. This which sees that which mourns that which colors any moon all the paste is so straight and a scissors has a pleasing line to measure and there is no hidden treasure. ”

“ A time for splashing is not ever with a brick color. No shaking is too great for a head. This does not mean coming after. It means that that is never over. It means more and it has no splinter, it does not mean samples.
A pale rose is a smell that has no fountain, that has upside down the same distinction, elegance is not coloured, the pain is there.
It is so clearly pleased that which is benumbed and articulate and if in replying there is the indication of a sentence then surely the whole thing is hurled. The house has that patience. ”

“ A bang is the sound of water, a simple string ties it together. It is so struck that there is water, moisture has a sample of more. There is no sympathy. There is no educator. If the width is more the wider is wider. The width is not a wayside it is the block. There is the color soon. There is no shade. Shadows are a sampler. There is no sampler. The width is precious. It is wading in length. The wide angel has no wet winter. It is not drained wetter.
Bursting no more and being the sample of more of it is not so much simpler than it was. ”

“ So serene, so much a moon, so white and always plain, a sensation is not altered by more being mentioned.
A time to stay is when there is the feeling in it and it has been done. Why should no hope be more. Why should it. It does show faces and if there are there one is smaller, there is no reason why a beard should be there. It is mostly in sight and blindness is satisfying. There is no blindness where the talk is cheap.
Laugh the basket into a little glass and all the point is painted. So soon is the jewel and so dirty the splinter that any march is a distinction. ”

“ A peal is that mountain which makes a ring and is ringing. There is no squeak, there is no touch there is no lump, a light bed is left when it is carried away, it has no temper, it has when it has, it has the bent bedspread, it lies like that left not limply and next to lightly and no mixed more. It is so christened when it is there. It has that space to identify. It is the mending of the beam and it is not clear and shows the courage more of the plentiful timber which is not scattered and put together. ”

“ It is so wintry and hair is blowing and all the slippery slides have water on them, it is so summery and wind is water and all that is red is what is burning, the whole excitement, all the wedding shows the spring to be the place where water springs, all the horizon, all the dwelling shows that escaping is not an escapade that is in a suggestion. So to reason and so to eclipse and so to redden the western sun, so to accept and so to annoy and so to have no piece of money, so much so is not a tangible substance, it is intangible and therefore it is sliced. ”

“ Keep the place that is not open, close the place that has one door, shut the place that has a cellar, suffer where all suffer more, argue, and shelter the understanding orphan, and silence that is silence is not sufficient there must even be sleep.
Puzzle is more than a speck and a soiled collar. A pound is more than oat meal and a new institution. A silence is no more than occasional. It respects understanding and salt and even a rope. It respects a news-stand and it also it very also respects desert. All the ice can descend together. ”

“ To see a sample of cheese means that the authority which mingles excellence with scratching is such that a new beginning has no swelling. All the tunes are played and the voice is louder. There is no repair.
Plunder and an appetite, seasoning and sensitive singing all this makes that come back. There is a solemn winter. There is that.
To fit a car to the same stand as the pressing of every button means that there is a decision. So much unity does show friendship. A tangle is no less. There are no narratives.
A plain pet does know how to draw. Drawing is a sin. ”

“ Surely a fire is famous and a famous fire is in the fire. Surely no more special spending shows anything. And yet if there is no wind there is no haste and if there is no haste why is twenty older than thirty and thirty older than twenty-eight, why is it and why is there no mistake. There is no mistake because there is the time and the accusation is indented and this makes enough so that clouding does not make a cemetery. A surprise is not in sight. ”

“ Clearly and a gem, singly and all four, the stem, the stone the happy way, the single blessing of the longing soon, the patent habit of the leaving of the room, all this and no white light is not more dim than every candle and many of them make the illumination gentler, they dwindle in large, they season the sun, they blossom the churn, they bestow in a plant. This was no sprain, this was the regal pin. ”

“ Solid, what is solid, is more solid than everything, it is not doubtful because there is no necessity.
Haughtiness, there is haughtiness when there is no tape and no billiard rooms and no need to be secured from wet. There is certainly some selected obstacles.
The certainty of a change in the parts that speak, this uncertainty does not show as it does not fashion speech. All union is in the widow and all menace is in the band.
Any way to bend the hat is the way to encourage vice. Virtue all virtue is resolved and some and any hat, every hat is identical. A shadow a white shadow is a mountain. ”

“ Not lading the leaning and not exhilerating the creation and the tending of the flowering is practically all of that thing. Arranging the renewal of refusing by accepting is the only sweetness succeeding is not subduing. Succeeding is not staggering when it is not proceeding and the best plan is the day that has less provision. The whole place is one place and the place that is that place is the place where the hope is that which has no time. The only withdrawing of nothing that has longing is the time that it takes to say that there is joining. ”

“ The silence that is not preserved, the silence is the same as the characteristic which is not finished.
A pound of paper and no more string, a pound of string and no more leather, no pounds of anything else, does that make indifference, it does, it does make authority. All the calamity that shows origin and design is that which when it is understood is redetermined all this is entitled readministration. There is no use in a pencil, there is no use in any direction of succeeding in experience, there is not one single objection. ”

“ The special scenery which makes the blameless see and the solitary resemble a conversation is not that which resembles that memory. There is no necessity for furthering the regulation of the understanding. One special absence does not make any place empty. The dampness which is not covered by a cloth is not mingled with color. ”

“ To be regularly gay was to do every day the gay thing that they did every day. To be regularly gay was to end every day at the same time after they had been regularly gay. They were regularly gay. They were gay every day. They ended every day in the same way, at the same time, and they had been every day regularly gay. ”

“ Suggesting a sage brush with a turkey and also something abominable is not the only pain there is in so much provoking. There is even more. To begin a lecture is a strange way of taking dirty apple blossoms and is there more use in water, certainly there is if there is going to be fishing, enough water would make desert and even prunes, it would make nothing throw any shade because after all is there not more practical humor in a series of photographs and also in a treacherous scupture.
Any hurry any little hurry has so much subsistence, it has and choosing, it has. ”

“ One works with words and one would like words that have a taste on the lips, that have a perfume to the nostrils, rattling words one can throw into a box and shake, making a sharp, jingling sound, words that, when seen on the printed page, have a distinct arresting effect upon the eye, words that when they jump out from under the pen one may feel with the fingers as one might caress the cheeks of his beloved. ”

“ A birthday, what is a birthday, a birthday is a speech, it is a second time when there is tobacco, it is only one time when there is poison. It is more than one time when the occasion which shows an occasional sharp separation is unanimous. ”

“ Little frame if it is cheaper than a big one is a different size. There is no use disputing as memory is a reminder.
Not to pay for a conversation, not to pay anything for any conversation, not to throw away paying, not to pass paying, not to pay anything this is not being a victim. What is victory, victory is that which eschewing liberation and a girdle and gratitude and resignation and a choice display and more flavor shows a strange reluctance to have a maritime connection. ”

“ My thought in the matter is something like this—that every artist working with words as his medium, must at times be profoundly irritated by what seems the limitations of his medium. What things does he not wish to create with words! There is the mind of the reader before him and he would like to create in that reader's mind a whole new world of sensations, or rather one might better say he would like to call back into life all of the dead and sleeping senses.
There is a thing one might call “the extension of the province of his art” one wants to achieve. ”

“ A pleasant taste and plenty of butter, a pleasant drink and plenty of water, tea and more fruit than in winter, bread and more eaten than ever this is so sad and every one sees that it is to be cheerful. Any one sees cheerful weather, every one eats cheerful potatoes, they are large and there is water and there is butter, a whole city is not subdued it is iniquitous, it is so soon to see the plant that is not buried showing more white tail than ever. A little thing is never tender. ”

“ The whole thing that shows the result is the little way that the balls and the pieces that are with them which are not birds as they are older do not measure the distance between a cover and a calendar. This which is not a question is not reverse and the question which is a question is at noon.
To question a special date is not mercenary. To answer a single servant is not obligatory. To be afraid is not nearsighted. An exclamation does not connect more grass than there is with any more trees than have branches. ”

“ They are not pieces and there is reason, there is reason in it because the whole thing shows such dissociation that all doing it for that purpose and together there can be no question but that they succeed.
A tobacco habit is one that a leaf does not enlighten and yet carelessness is so extraordinary. Supposing that the arrangement had been made and that it was agreed that no separation between any one being one and being another one could be established, supposing this were agreed and there was no conversation, would this enlighten any one, if it would why is the result so ambiguous. ”

“ There is a city of English and American words and it has been a neglected city. Strong broad shouldered words, that should be marching across open fields under the blue sky, are clerking in little dusty dry goods stores, young virgin words are being allowed to consort with whores, learned words have been put to the ditch digger's trade. Only yesterday I saw a word that once called a whole nation to arms serving in the mean capacity of advertising laundry soap.
For me the work of Gertrude Stein consists in a rebuilding, an entire new recasting of life, in the city of words. ”