Frases de Gertrude Stein

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“El artista trabaja localizando el mundo en sí mismo.”

“Se necesita mucho tiempo para ser un genio, tienes que sentarte tanto sin hacer nada, realmente sin hacer nada.”

“El romance lo es todo.”

“Lo relajante de la historia es que se repite.”

“¿Es peor tener miedo que aburrirse? Esa es la cuestión.”

“En los Estados Unidos hay más espacio donde nadie está que donde está cualquiera. Esto es lo que hace que Estados Unidos sea lo que es.”

“Everybody thinks that this civilization has lasted a very long time but it really does take very few grandfathers’ granddaughters to take us back to the dark ages.”

“The thing that is most interesting about government servants is that they believe what they are supposed to believe, they really do believe what they are supposed to believe.”

“And identity is funny being yourself is funny as you are never yourself to yourself except as you remember yourself and then of course you do not believe yourself.”

“Growing has no connection with audience.
Audience has no connection with identity.
Identity has no connection with a universe.
A universe has no connection with human nature.”

“The two things most men are proudest of is the thing that any man can do and doing does in the same way, that is being drunk and being the father of their son.”

“Before one is successful that is before any one is ready to pay money for anything you do then you are certain that every word you have written is an important word to have written and that any word you have written is as important as any other word and you keep everything you have written with great care.”

“It is always a mistake to be plain-spoken.”

“I dislike it when instead of saying Jew they say Hebrew or Israelite, or Semite, I do not like it and why should a Negro want to be called colored. Why should we want to lose being a Negro… I have stated that a noun to me is a stupid thing, if you know a thing and its name why bother about it but you have to know its name to talk about it. Well its name is Negro if it is a Negro and Jew if it is a Jew and both of them are nice strong names and so let us keep them.”

“It is not what France gave you but what it did not take from you that was important.”

“Clarity is of no importance because nobody listens and nobody knows what you mean no matter what you mean, nor how clearly you mean what you mean. But if you have vitality enough of knowing enough of what you mean, somebody and sometime and sometimes a great many will have to realize that you know what you mean and so they will agree that you mean what you know, what you know you mean, which is as near as anybody can come to understanding any one.”

“She took us to see her granddaughter who was teaching in the Dominican convent in San Raphael, we went across the bay on a ferry, that had not changed but Goat Island might just as well not have been there, anyway what was the use of my having come from Oakland it was not natural to have come from there yes write about it if I like or anything if I like but not there, there is no there there.”

“I just tell you and though I dont sound like it I've got plenty of sense, there aint any answer, there aint going to be any answer, there never has been any answer, that’s the answer.”

“The earth is the earth as a peasant sees it, the world is the world as a duchess sees it, and anyway a duchess would be nothing if the earth was not there as the peasant tills it.”

“It is the soothing thing about history that it does repeat itself.”

“I like a thing simple but it must be simple through complication. Everything must come into your scheme, otherwise you cannot achieve real simplicity.”

“As there was never any question there was never any answer.”

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

“Remarks are not literature.”

“The whole duty of man consists in being reasonable and just… I am reasonable because I know the difference between understanding and not understanding and I am just because I have no opinion about things I don’t understand.”

“Communists are people who fancied that they had an unhappy childhood.”

“It is a difficult thing to like anybody else's ideas of being funny.”

“Human nature, human nature acts as it acts when it is identified when there is an identity but it is not human nature that has anything to do with that it is that anybody is there where they are, it is that that has to do with identity, with government and propaganda with history with individualism and with communism but it has nothing nothing to do with the human mind … because the human mind writes what there is and what has identity go to do with that … nothing at all.”

“Suppose no one asked a question, what would be the answer.”

“Before the flowers of friendship faded friendship faded.”

“The deepest thing in any one is the conviction of the bad luck that follows boasting.”

“One does not get better but different and older and that is always a pleasure.”

“Politeness does not interfere with facts, politeness is just another fact.”

“To know to know to love her so.
Four saints prepare for saints.”

“Suddenly it was all different, what I did had a value that made people ready to pay, up to that time everything I did had a value because nobody was ready to pay. It is funny about money. And it is funny about identity. You are you because your little dog knows you, but when your public knows you and does not want to pay for you and when your public knows you and does want to pay for you, you are not the same you.”