Nothing has happened today except kindness.

— Gertrude Stein

One must either accept some theory or else believe one's own instinct or follow the world's opinion.

— Gertrude Stein

Poetry consists in a rhyming dictionary and things seen.

— Gertrude Stein

Romance is everything.

— Gertrude Stein

She always says she dislikes the abnormal it is so obvious. She says the normal is so much more simply complicated and interesting.

— Gertrude Stein

She told her father Mr. Abram Collard that she did not like it at all being one being living then. He never said anything. She was afraid then, she was one needing charming stories and happy telling of them and not having that thing she was always trembling.

— Gertrude Stein

Spaniards and Americans are not like Europeans, they are not like Orientals, they have something in common, that is they do not need religion or mysticism not to believe in reality as all the world knows it, not even when they see it.

— Gertrude Stein

The central theme of the novel is that they were glad to see each other.

— Gertrude Stein

The nineteenth century believed in science, but the twentieth century does not.

— Gertrude Stein

The painter does not conceive himself as existing in himself, he conceives himself as a reflection of the objects he has put into his pictures, and he lives in the reflections of his pictures, a writer, a serious writer, conceives himself as existing by and in himself, he does not at all live in the reflection of his books, to write he must be first of all exist in himself, but for a painter to be able to paint, the painting must first be done.

— Gertrude Stein