Great Throughts Treasury

"You have to know what you want to get."

"Just before she [Gertrude Stein] died she asked, 'What is the answer?' No answer came. She laughed and said, 'In that case what is the question?' Then she died."

"Whenever you get there, there's no "there" there."

"What is the answer? In that case, what is the question?"

"There ain’t no answer. There ain’t going to be any answer. There never has been an answer. That’s the answer."

"A real failure does not need an excuse. It is an end in itself. "

"Disillusionment in living is finding that no one can really ever be agreeing with you completely in anything. "

"Silent gratitude isn't very much to anyone. "

"There is no there there. "

"Is it worse to be scared than to be bored, that is the question. "

"A beauty is not suddenly in a circle. It comes with rapture. A great deal of beauty is rapture. A circle is a necessity. Otherwise you would see no one. We each have our circle."

"A conversation in English in Finnish and in French cannot be held at the same time nor with indifference ever or after a time."

"It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing."

"Well, she certainly hadn't a fair run for her money."

"A creator is so completely contemporary that he has the appearance of being ahead of his generation."

"A creator is not in advance of his generation but he is the first of his contemporaries to be conscious of what is happening to his generation."

"A day is additional with there having been with a condition of remaining all day which it is partly that they like to look about made it for them in reference as they knew that is whenever they met by the arrangement which had been made for them in the meantime. What is a sentence. They need not be having them made by them."

"A diary means yes indeed"

"A creator who creates, who is not an academician, who is not someone who studies in a school where the rules are already known, and of course being known they no longer exist, a creator then who creates is necessarily of his generation. His generation lives in its contemporary way but they only live in it. In art, in literature, in the theatre, in short in everything that does not contribute to their immediate comfort they live in the preceding generation."

"A great deal of beauty is rapture. A circle is a necessity. Otherwise you would see no one. We each have our circle."

"A feather is trimmed, it is trimmed by the light and the bug and the post, it is trimmed by little leaning and by all sorts of mounted reserves and loud volumes. It is surely cohesive."

"A little artist has all the tragic unhappiness and the sorrows of a great artist and he is not a great artist."

"A long war like this makes you realize the society you really prefer, the home, goats chickens and dogs and casual acquaintances. I find myself not caring at all for gardens flowers or vegetables cats cows and rabbits, one gets tired of trees vines and hills, but houses, goats chickens dogs and casual acquaintances never pall."

"A master-piece may be unwelcome but it is never dull."

"A light white, a disgras, an ink spot, a rosy charm."

"A house in the country is not the same as a country house."

"A nice war is a war where everybody who is heroic is a hero, and everybody more or less is a hero in a nice war. Now this war is not at all a nice war."

"A no, a no since, a no since when, a no since when since, a no since when since a no since when since, a no since, a no since when since, a no since, a no, a no since a no since, a no since, a no since."

"A novel is what you dream in your night sleep. A novel is not waking thoughts although it is written and thought with waking thoughts. But really a novel goes as dreams go in sleeping at night and some dreams are like anything and some dreams are like something and some dreams change and some dreams are quiet and some dreams are not. And some dreams are just what any one would do only a little different always just a little different and that is what a novel is."

"A rose is a rose is a rose."

"A saint a real saint never does anything, a martyr does something but a really good saint does nothing, and so I wanted to have Four Saints who did nothing and I wrote the Four Saints In Three Acts and they did nothing and that was everything."

"A writer must always try to have a philosophy and he should also have a psychology and a philology and many other things. Without a philosophy and a psychology and all these various other things he is not really worthy of being called a writer. I agree with Kant and Schopenhauer and Plato and Spinoza and that is quite enough to be called a philosophy. But then of course a philosophy is not the same thing as a style."

"A saint is one to be for two when three and you make five and two and cover. A at most. Saint saint a saint."

"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."

"A very important thing is not to make up your mind that you are any one thing."

"Adventure is making the distant approach nearer"

"A virgin a whole virgin is judged made and so between curves and outlines and real seasons and more out glasses and a perfectly unprecedented arrangement between old ladies and mild colds there is no satin wood shining."

"Action and reaction are equal and opposite."

"Adventure is making the distant approach nearer but romance is having what is where it is which is not where you are stay where it is."

"A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears."

"Affectations can be dangerous."

"After a while I murmured to Picasso that I liked his portrait of Gertrude Stein. Yes, he said, everybody says that she does not look like it but that does not make any difference, she will, he said."

"After all anybody is as their land and air is. Anybody is as the sky is low or high. Anybody is as there is wind or no wind there. That is what makes a people, makes their kind of looks, their kind of thinking, their subtlety and their stupidity, and their eating and their drinking and their language."

"After all human beings have to live dogs too so as not to know that time is passing, that is the whole business of living to go on so they will not know that time is passing, that is why they get drunk that is why they like to go to war, during a war there is the most complete absence of the sense that time is passing a year of war lasts so much longer than any other year. After all that is what life is and that is the reason there is no Utopia, little or big young or old dog or man everybody wants every minute so filled that they are not conscious of that minute passing. It's just as well they do not think about it you have to be a genius to live in it and know it to exist in it and express it to accept it and deny it by creating it."

"After all, human beings are like that. When they are alone they want to be with others, and when they are with others they want to be alone."

"After all everybody, that is, everybody who writes is interested in living inside themselves in order to tell what is inside themselves. That is why writers have to have two countries, the one where they belong and the one in which they live really. The second one is romantic, is is separate from themselves, it is not real but it is really there."

"All the world knows how to cry but not all the world knows how to sigh. Sighing is extra."

"All of you young people who served in the war. You are a lost generation... You have no respect for anything. You drink yourselves to death."

"After all, everybody, that is, everybody who writes is interested in living inside themselves in order to tell what is inside themselves. That is why writers have to have two countries, the one where they belong and the one in which they live really. The second one is romantic, it is separate from themselves, it is not real but it is really there."

"Alice Toklas' father had almost once had an oil well they dug and dug but naturally the oil did not gush, naturally not these things never do happen to any one one knows, if it could happen to them you would not be very likely to know them most naturally not."