. . . 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 like the feeling of words doing as they want to do and as they have to do.
Interpretation
Gertrude Stein expresses a joy in the freedom and necessity of words in creative expression.
This quote by Gertrude Stein captures the essence of artistic expression through language. It highlights the dual nature of words, where they can be both free to flow creatively and bound by the rules of language and meaning. Stein suggests that there is beauty in allowing words to take on their own paths while still acknowledging their intrinsic purpose within communication and art.
In practice
During a poetry reading, one might quote this to emphasize the beauty of language.
. . . 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.
The creator of the new composition in the arts is an outlaw until he is a classic.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We could in the United States make as great a variety of wines as are made in Europe, not exactly of the same kinds, but doubtless as good.
When the uncreative tell the creative what to do, it stops being art.
There is only one place to write and that is alone at a typewriter. The writer who has to go into the streets is a writer who does not know the streets. . . when you leave your typewriter you leave your machine gun and the rats come pouring through.
All furnished, all in arms;_x000D_ _x000D_ All plum'd like estridges that with the wind_x000D_ _x000D_ Bated like eagles having lately bathed;_x000D_ _x000D_ Glittering in golden coats like images;_x000D_ _x000D_ As full of spirit as the month of May_x000D_ _x000D_ And gorgeous as the sun at midsummer;_x000D_ _x000D_ Wanton as youthful goats, wild as young bulls.
The commentator may be excused for repeating what he has stressed in his own books and lectures, namely that "offensive" is frequently but a synonym for "unusual;" and a great work of art is of course always original, and thus by its very nature should come more or less as a shocking surprise.
Some of us are born with a weakness for music. As a baby, music would stop whatever thought I was having. If I was worried, it would stop me worrying; if I was crying, it would stop me crying. Music was a healing thing for me.
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