According to Diana Vreeland, who is right up there next to Jesus and the guy who invented gin in my personal pantheon, Gertrude Stein was one of the best mannequins in the biz. “You just can’t take a picture of [that] old broad.”
I’m not going to spend time telling you about Stein because everyone in the whole world should go out and read her letters
“Let me listen to me and not to them.”
“It is funny that men who are supposed to be scientific cannot get themselves to realise the basic principle of physics, that action and reaction are equal and opposite, that when you persecute people you always rouse them to be strong and stronger. ”
“Nature is commonplace. Imitation is more interesting.”
“A masterpiece… may be unwelcome but it is never dull.”
“A real failure does not need an excuse. It is an end in itself.”
“A vegetable garden in the beginning looks so promising and then after all little by little it grows nothing but vegetables, nothing, nothing but vegetables. ”
“An audience is always warming but it must never be necessary to your work.”
“A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears.”
“I have always noticed that in portraits of really great writers the mouth is always firmly closed.”
“I know what Germans are. They are a funny people. They are always choosing someone to lead them in a direction which they do not want to go.”
“Considering how dangerous everything is, nothing is really very frightening.”
“Communists are people who fancied that they had an unhappy childhood.”
“Disillusionment in living is finding that no one can really ever be agreeing with you completely in anything.”
“Do not forget birthdays. This is in no way a propaganda for a larger population.”
“Everybody knows if you are too careful you are so occupied in being careful that you are sure to stumble over something.”
“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. ”
“Is it worse to be scared than to be bored, that is the question.”
“It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing. “
I do love Ms. Stein. Amazing writer, amazing life, amazing style. I’ve already pegged her as my old lady style icon when I reach a certain age. She was the best of America and Europe and somehow managed to celebrate both and denigrate neither.
Comment by Abby — August 22, 2009 @ 2:10 am
What a lovely little celebration of Gertrude Stein…thanks
Comment by Bobby G Keith — September 8, 2009 @ 7:50 am