It is natural not to care about a sister certainly not when she is four years older and grinds her teeth at night.
— Gertrude Stein
Picasso once remarked I do not care who it is that has or does influence me as long as it is not myself.
It is funny that men who are supposed to be scientific cannot get themselves to realise the basic principle of physics, that action and reaction are equal and opposite, that when you persecute people you always rouse them to be strong and stronger.
It is always a mistake to be plain-spoken.
I could undertake to be an efficient pupil if it were possible to find an efficient teacher.
Everyone gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.
Literature - creative literature - unconcerned with sex, is inconceivable.
A diary means yes indeed.
It is extraordinary that whole populations have no projects for the future, none at all. It certainly is extraordinary, but it is certainly true.
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.
The minute you or anybody else knows what you are you are not it, you are what you or anybody else knows you are and as everything in living is made up of finding out what you are it is extraordinarily difficult really not to know what you are and yet to be that thing.
Americans are very friendly and very suspicious, that is what Americans are and that is what always upsets the foreigner, who deals with them, they are so friendly how can they be so suspicious they are so suspicious how can they be so friendly but they just are.
Let me listen to me and not to them.
What is the answer? In that case, what is the question?
Considering how dangerous everything is, nothing is really very frightening.
The nineteenth century believed in science but the twentieth century does not.
Hemingway's remarks are not literature.
If you are looking down while you are walking it is better to walk up hill the ground is nearer.
I think the reason I am important is that I know everything.
There is a difference between twenty-nine and thirty. When you are twenty-nine it can be the beginning of everything. When you are thirty it can be the end of everything.
It is funny the two things most men are proudest of is the thing that any man can do and doing does in the same way, that is being drunk and being the father of their son.
The deepest thing in any one is the conviction of the bad luck that follows boasting.
One does not get better but different and older and that is always a pleasure.
Men and girls, men and girls: Artificial swine and pearls.
This is the lesson that history teaches: repetition.
If you can do it then why do it?
It is the soothing thing about history that it does repeat itself.
Communists are people who fancied that they had an unhappy childhood.
I like a view but I like to sit with my back turned to it.
I do want to get rich but I never want to do what there is to do to get rich.
Everybody knows if you are too careful you are so occupied in being careful that you are sure to stumble over something.
Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.
A masterpiece... may be unwelcome but it is never dull.
A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears.
What is music. A passion for colonies not a love of country.
It is extraordinary that when you are acquainted with a whole family you can forget about them.
There is no real reality to a really imagined life any more.
To write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write.
Generally speaking, everyone is more interesting doing nothing than doing anything.
An audience is always warming but it must never be necessary to your work.
The thing that differentiates man from animals is money.
America is my country and Paris is my hometown.
Whoever said money can't buy happiness simply didn't know where to go shopping.
I've been rich and I've been poor. It's better to be rich.
The contemporary thing in art and literature is the thing which doesn't make enough difference to the people of that generation so that they can accept it or reject it.
We are always the same age inside.
When they are alone they want to be with others, and when they are with others they want to be alone. After all, human beings are like that.
It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.
In the United States there is more space where nobody is than where anybody is. That is what makes America what it is.
Money is always there but the pockets change; it is not in the same pockets after a change, and that is all there is to say about money.
