. . . money . . . is really the difference between men and animals, most of the things men feel, animals feel, and vice versa, but animals do not know about money.
Gertrude SteinRead
I have always noticed that in portraits of really great writers the mouth is always firmly closed.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that great writers convey profound thoughts without the need for verbal expression.
Gertrude Stein's observation highlights the idea that true literary genius often communicates deeper meanings through their work rather than through spoken words. The image of great writers with closed mouths implies that their written words speak volumes, capturing complex emotions and thoughts in a way that transcends mere conversation.
Themes
WritersExpressionArtLiteratureCreativity
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be shared at a literary gathering to emphasize the power of written words.
More from Gertrude Stein
All quotes βThe creator of the new composition in the arts is an outlaw until he is a classic.
Gertrude SteinRead
If the communication is perfect, the words have life, and that is all there is to good writing, putting down on the paper words which dance and weep and make love and fight and kiss and perform miracles.
Gertrude SteinRead
The United States is just now the oldest country in the world, there always is an oldest country and she is it, it is she who is the mother of the twentieth century civilization. She began to feel herself as it just after the Civil War. And so it is a country the right age to have been born in and the wrong age to live in.
Gertrude SteinRead
I simply contend that the middle-class ideal which demands that people be affectionate, respectable, honest and content, that they avoid excitements and cultivate serenity is the ideal that appeals to me, it is in short the ideal of affectionate family life, of honorable business methods.
Gertrude SteinRead
It is natural to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes to that siren until she allures us to our death.
Gertrude SteinRead
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My kind of director is an actor-director who writes.
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For the film maker must come by his convention, as painters and writers and musicians have done before him.
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The vast majority of writers out there, they finish their books and no one cares whether their book is late or ever comes out at all. And then it comes out and two reviews are published and it sells 12 copies.
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The big problem with songwriting for me is starting a new song. It's the thing where all the anguish exists, not in the writing of the song, but the starting of the new song.
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