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A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears.
Gertrude Stein
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Writers and painters should draw inspiration from all their senses to enhance their creations.

This quote by Gertrude Stein emphasizes the importance of multi-sensory experiences in the creative process. It suggests that writers should observe the world visually, while painters should listen and absorb sounds, thus blending different perceptual experiences to enrich their artistic expressions.

Themes

ArtCreativitySensesWritingPainting

In practice

Example use cases

This quote can be used during a workshop on creative writing to inspire participants to engage all their senses.

More from Gertrude Stein

. . . 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.
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The creator of the new composition in the arts is an outlaw until he is a classic.
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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.
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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.
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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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