Gertrude Stein

“What is music. A passion for colonies not a love of country.”

“Nature is commonplace. Imitation is more interesting.”

“I have declared that patience is never more than patient. I too have declared, that I who am not patient am patient.”

“In a war everybody always knows all about Switzerland, in peace times it is just Switzerland but in war time it is the only country that everybody has confidence in, everybody.”

“Poetry consists in a rhyming dictionary and things seen.”

“There ain't no answer. There ain't gonna be any answer. There never has been an answer. That's the answer.”

“Romance is everything.”

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

“I could undertake to be an efficient pupil if it were possible to find an efficient teacher.”

“Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.”

“That is what war is and dancing it is forward and back, when one is out walking one wants not to go back the way they came but in dancing and in war it is forward and back.”

“War is never fatal but always lost. Always lost.”

“Just as everybody has the vote including women, I think children should, because as a child is conscious of itself then it has to me an existence and has a stake in what happens.”

“Men cannot count, they do not know that two and two make four if women do not tell them so.”

“An audience is always warming but it must never be necessary to your work.”