Autobiography Of Alice B Toklas Quotes

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

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

I like a view but I like to sit with my back turned to it.

...they do quote me, that means that my words and my sentences get under their skins although they do no know it.

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.

I always say that you cannot tell what a picture really is or what an object really is until you dust it every day and you cannot tell what a book is until you type it or proof-read it. It then does something to you that only reading it never can do.

She says it is a good thing to have no sense of how it is done in the things that amuse you. You should have one absorbing occupation and as for the other things in life for full enjoyment you should only contemplate results. In this way you are bound to feel more about it than those who know a little of how it is done.

She answered him, there is nothing within you that fights itself and hitherto you have had the instinct to produce antagonism in others which stimulated you to attack.

She always says that americans can understand spaniards. That they are the only two western nations that can realize abstraction. That in americans it expresses itself b disembodiedness, in literature and machinery, in Spain by ritual so abstract that it does not connect itself with anything but ritual.

J'aime vivre au milieu de tant de gens et être si seule avec ma langue et moi-même.

یکبار از وُلار درباره‌ی تابلوی یکی از نقاشان پرسیدند، گفت فلانی سزانِ مجموعه‌دارهای فقیر هست. خب، والوتون هم مانه‌ی مجموعه‌دارانِ فقیر است.

The important thing, she insists, is that you must have deep down as the deepest thing in you a sense of equality. Then anybody will do anything for you.

همان‌طور که پابلو (پیکاسو) یکبار گفت، وقتی چیزی را خلق می‌کنی، خلق کردن آن به‌حدی پیچیده است که حکماً زشت خواهد شد، اما آن‌هایی که از تو تقلید می‌کنند مجبور نیستند نگرانِ خلق کردن آن باشند و می‌توانند آن را خوشگل بسازند، و بنابراین وقتی دیگران از کاری تقلید می‌کنند همه خوششان می‌آید.

One of the things that I have liked all these years is to be surrounded by people who know no english. It has left me more intensely alone with my eyes and my english. I do not know if it would have been possible to have english be so all in all to me otherwise. And they none of them could read a word I wrote, most of them did not even know that I did write. No, I like living with so very many people and being all alone with english and myself.

You look ridiculous if you dance. You look ridiculous if you don’t dance. So you might as well dance.

She always had a way of seeing through the surface of things, understanding people as they really were, not as they pretended to be.

It was then that I said, and realized, that it is not what France gave you but what it did not take away from you that was important.

There is no such thing as repetition. Only insistence.

ولار هرگز کنجکاوی بیهوده نداشت، همیشه می‌خواست بداند همه راجع به همه چیز چه فکر می‌کنند زیرا از این راه می‌فهمید خودش چه فکر می‌کند.

گرترود به شدت معتقد است انسان فقط می‌تواند یک «مِتی‌یه» («کارِ جدی») داشته باشد همان‌طور که انسان فقط می‌تواند یک زبان داشته باشد. کار او نوشتن است و زبان او انگلیسی است.

گرترود همیشه می‌گوید که از چیزهای غیرعادی بدش می‌آید، خیلی واضح‌اند. می‌گوید که چیزهای عادی به‌طور ساده خیلی پیچیده‌تر و جالب‌ترند.

دوست جوان من، دو نوع هنر وجود دارد، هرگز این را فراموش نکن، هنر داریم و هنر رسمی داریم... همیشه این‌طور بوده و همیشه هم این‌طور خواهد بود.

Katzenjammer

به من گفت که او می‌تواند ببخشد اما هرگز نمی‌تواند فراموش کند. من اضافه کردم ولی من می‌توانم فراموش کنم اما نمی‌توانم ببخشم. مادر گرترود استاین در این مورد ظاهراً هیچکدام را نمی‌توانست انجام دهد.

The process of creation is a journey of self-discovery, revealing not just what we can do, but who we truly are. Through the act of creating, we explore and uncover aspects of ourselves that may not be apparent in our everyday lives.

شدیداً تحت تاثیر زیبایی فرناند قرار گرفت. درواقع کاملاً مفتون او شد. به گرترود استاین گفت اگر می‌توانستم فرانسه صحبت کنم با او عشق‌بازی می‌کردم و او را از چنگ پیکاسوی کوچولو در می‌آوردم. گرترود استاین با خنده گفت، مگر تو با کلمات عشق‌بازی می‌کنی؟

In the long run, it is not what you do for your children but what you have taught them to do for themselves that will make them successful human beings. Self-reliance and the ability to think critically are the greatest gifts you can give to them.

[Haweis] did however plead for commas. Gertrude Stein said commas were unnecessary, the sense should be intrinsic and not have to be explained by commas and otherwise commas are only a sign that one should pause and take breath but one should know of oneself when one wanted to pause and take breath. However, as she liked Haweis very much and he had given her a delightful painting for a fan, she gave him two commas. It must however be added that on rereading the manuscript she took the commas out.

To be truly creative, you must be free from all constraints, and this freedom comes from being true to yourself. The essence of creativity lies in breaking away from conventions and expressing your innermost thoughts and feelings without fear of judgment.

In the long run, it is not who you know but what you do with what you know that makes a difference. Relationships and connections are important, but it is the application of knowledge and the actions you take that ultimately define your impact and success.

No, she replied, you see I feel with my eyes and it does not make any difference to me what language I hear, I don’t hear a language, I hear tones of voice and rhythms, but with my eyes I see words and sentences and there is for me only one language and that is english.

Life is a very complicated thing. The trouble with life is that it is very complicated. It involves many facets and layers, and it is not something that can be easily understood or neatly categorized. The complexity of life requires a deep engagement and thoughtful reflection.

Sure, she said, as Pablo once remarked, when you make a thing, it is so complicated making it that it is bound to be ugly, but those that do it after you they don't have to worry about making it and they can make it pretty, and so everybody can like it when the others make it.

Art is not about creating something beautiful; it is about expressing something true. The value of art lies not in its aesthetic appeal, but in its ability to convey genuine emotion and insight. It is a reflection of the artist’s truth and their unique way of interpreting the world.

The things that one remembers are important and the things that one forgets are equally important. Memory is selective and subjective, shaping our understanding of the past and influencing our actions in the present. What we choose to hold onto and what we let go of defines who we are.

A work of art is not a thing but a way of looking at things. It is a method of expressing how you see the world. The creation itself is secondary to the vision behind it. What matters is not just the physical manifestation of art, but the perspective and insight that it brings to those who encounter it.

I have so much inertia and so little initiative that very possibly if you had not kept me from taking my degree I would have, well, not taken to the practice of medicine, but at any rate to pathological psychology and you don’t know how little I like pathological psychology, and how all medicine bores me.

Life is not real unless it is lived. To merely exist without engaging fully with the world around you, without embracing both the pain and the pleasure, is to miss the essence of what it means to be alive. Real life is experienced through action, through participation, through being present in each moment.

It was an endless variety. And everybody came and no one made any difference. Gertrude Stein sat peacefully in a chair and those who could did the same, the rest stood. There were the friends who sat around the stove and talked and there were the endless strangers who came and went. My memory of it is very vivid.

You will write if you will write without thinking of the result in terms of a result, but think of the writing in terms of discovery. The act of creation is not about achieving a specific outcome but about exploring the unknown, uncovering new truths, and experiencing the joy of finding something unexpected and beautiful.

was born in San Francisco, California. I have in consequence always preferred living in a temperate climate but it is difficult, on the continent of Europe or even in America, to find a temperate climate and live in it. My mother’s father was a pioneer, he came to California in ‘49, he married my grandmother who was very fond of music. She was a pupil of Clara Schumann’s father. My mother was a quiet charming woman named Emilie.

بعدها وقتی ماتیز مرد بسیار ثروتمندی شد به خریدن تابلو ادامه داد. می‌گفت که تابلوشناس است و به آن‌ها اعتماد دارد و شناختی از چیزهای دیگر ندارد. بنابراین برای لذت خودش و بعنوان بهترین ارثیه‌ای که می‌توانست برای فرزندانش بگذارد تابلوهای سزان را خرید. پیکاسو هم بعدها وقتی ثروتمند شد تابلو می‌خرید اما فقط کارهای خودش را. او هم نسبت به تابلوها همان عقیده را دارد و دلش می‌خواهد بهترین ارثیه را برای پسرش بگذارد و به همین دلیل هم آثار خودش را باز می‌خرد و جمع می‌کند.

Gertrude Stein has never ceased to be thankful to her mother for neither forgetting or forgiving. Imagine, she has said to me, if my mother had forgiven her sister-in-law and my father had gone into business with my uncle and we had lived and been brought up in New York, imagine, she says, how horrible. We would have been rich instead of reasonably poor but imagine how horrible to have been brought up in New York. I as a californian can very thoroughly sympathise.

Gertrude Stein, in her work, has always been possessed by the intellectual passion for exactitude in the description of inner and outer reality. She has produced a simplification by this concentration, and as a result the destruction of associational emotion in poetry and prose. She knows that beauty, music, decoration, the result of emotion should never be the cause, even events should not be the cause of emotion nor should they be the material of poetry and prose. Nor should emotion itself be the cause of poetry or prose. They should consist of an exact reproduction of either an outer or an inner reality.

I was born in San Francisco, California. I have in consequence always preferred living in a temperate climate but it is difficult, on the continent of Europe or even in America, to find a temperate climate and live in it.