Gertrude Stein Quotes

Gertrude Stein Quotes American expatriate writer, her Paris home was a salon for artists and writers between the two World Wars. She lived with her companion Alice B. Toklas from 1912 until her death. Selected Gertrude Stein Quotations It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing. Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense. Paris was the place that suited us who were to create the twentieth century art and literature. A diary means yes indeed. 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. Artists do not experiment. Experiment is what scientists do; they initiate an operation of unknown factors to be instructed by its results. An artist puts down what he knows and at every moment it is what he knows at that moment. 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 Jews have produced only three originative geniuses: Christ, Spinoza, and myself. In the United States there is more space where nobody is than where anybody is. This is what makes America what it is. 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. Communists are people who fancied that they had an unhappy childhood. Let me listen to me and not to them. 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. We are always the same age inside. Any one doing something and standing is one doing something and standing. Some one was doing something and was standing. Any one doing something and standing is one doing something and standing. Any one doing something and standing is one who is standing and doing something. Some one was doing something and was standing. That one was doing something standing. I do want to get rich, but I never want to do what there is to get rich. Silent gratitude isnt very much use to anyone. The composition is the thing seen by everyone living in the living they are doing, they are the composing of the composition that at the time they are living is the composition of the time in which they are living. I like a view but I like to sit with my back turned to it. 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. Money is always there but the pockets change. The thing that differentiates man from animals is money. If you can do it then why do it? The nineteenth century believed in science but the twentieth century does not. It is the soothing thing about history that it does repeat itself. Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose. Explore Womens Voices and Womens History Womens Voices - About Womens QuotesBiographiesToday in Womens History About These Quotes Quote collection assembled by Jone Johnson Lewis. Each quotation page in this collection and the entire collection  © Jone Johnson Lewis. This is an informal collection assembled over many years. I regret that I am not be able to provide the original source if it is not listed with the quote. Citation information:Jone Johnson Lewis. Gertrude Stein Quotes. About Womens History. URL: http://womenshistory.about.com/od/quotes/a/gertrude_stein.htm . Date accessed: (today). (More on how to cite online sources including this page)

The Best, Most Famous Plays by Harold Pinter

The Best, Most Famous Plays by Harold Pinter Born: October 10th, 1930 (London, England) Died: December 24th, 2008 â€Å"I’ve never been able to write a happy play, but I’ve been able to enjoy a happy life.† -Harold Pinter Comedy of Menace To say that Harold Pinter’s plays are unhappy is a gross understatement. Most critics have labeled his characters â€Å"sinister† and â€Å"malevolent.† The actions within his plays are bleak, dire, and purposely without purpose. The audience leaves bewildered with a queasy feeling – an uneasy sensation, as though you were supposed to do something terribly important, but you can’t remember what it was. You leave the theater a bit disturbed, a bit excited, and more than bit unbalanced. And that’s just the way Harold Pinter wanted you to feel. Critic Irving Wardle used the term, â€Å"Comedies of Menace† to describe Pinter’s dramatic work. The plays are fueled by intense dialogue that seems disconnected from any sort of exposition. The audience rarely knows the background of the characters. They don’t even know if the characters are telling the truth. The plays do offer a consistent theme: domination. Pinter described his dramatic literature as an analysis of â€Å"the powerful and the powerless.† Though his earlier plays were exercises in absurdity, his later dramas became overtly political. During the last decade of his life, he focused less on writing and more on political activism (of the left-wing variety). In 2005 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature. During his Nobel lecture he stated: â€Å"You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good.† Politics aside, his plays capture a nightmarish electricity that jolts the theater. Here is a brief look at the best of Harold Pinter’s plays: The Birthday Party (1957) A distraught and disheveled Stanley Webber may or may not be a piano player. It may or may not be his birthday. He may or may not know the two diabolically bureaucratic visitors that have come to intimidate him. There are many uncertainties throughout this surreal drama. However, one thing is definite: Stanley is an example of a powerless character struggling against powerful entities. (And you can probably guess who is going to win.) The Dumbwaiter (1957) It has been said that this one act play was the inspiration for the 2008 film In Bruges. After viewing both the Colin Farrell movie and the Pinter play, it is easy to see the connections. â€Å"The Dumbwaiter† reveals the sometimes boring, sometimes anxiety-ridden lives of two hit men – one is a seasoned professional, the other is newer, less sure of himself. As they wait to receive orders for their next deadly assignment, something rather odd happens. The dumbwaiter at the back of the room continually lowers down food orders. But the two hit men are in a grungy basement – there’s no food to prepare. The more the food orders persist, the more the assassins turn on each other. The Caretaker (1959) Unlike his earlier plays, The Caretaker was a financial victory, the first of many commercial successes. The full-length play takes place entirely in a shabby, one-room apartment owned by two brothers. One of the brothers is mentally disabled (apparently from electro-shock therapy). Perhaps because he isn’t very bright, or perhaps out of kindness, he brings a drifter into their home. A powerplay begins between the homeless man and the brothers. Each character talks vaguely about things they want to accomplish in their life – but not one of the characters lives up to his word. The Homecoming (1964) Imagine you and your wife travel from America to your hometown in England. You introduce her to your father and working class brothers. Sounds like a nice family reunion, right? Well, now imagine your testosterone-mad relatives suggest that your wife abandon her three children and stay on as a prostitute. And then she accepts the offer! That’s the kind of twisted mayhem that occurs throughout Pinter’s devious Homecoming. Old Times (1970) This play illustrates the flexibility and fallibility of memory. Deeley has been married to his wife Kate for over two decades. Yet, he apparently does not know everything about her. When Anna, Kate’s friend from her distant bohemian days, arrives they begin talking about the past. The details are vaguely sexual, but it seems that Anna recalls having a romantic relationship with Deeley’s wife. And so begins a verbal battle as each character narrates what they remember about yesteryear – though it’s uncertain whether those memories are a product of truth or imagination.