All from EVERYBODY'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY by Gertrude Stein, her follow-up to THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS, and even more accessible, too much so for some of her purist fans, but an interesting take on her unexpected literary success with her clever autobiography couched as though from the perspective of her "lifetime companion" Alice Toklas (which EVERYBODY'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY makes clear Alice preferred to the middle initial version of her name).
"Everybody knows if you are too careful you are so occupied in being careful that you are sure to stumble over something."
"It is natural that if anybody asks you to go anywhere, once you have the habit of going anywhere, that you go anywhere once. If you go again you go again but if you have a lot of interest in seeing anything you will go anywhere once. Anyway I will."
"I have been writing a lot about money lately, it is a fascinating subject, it is really the difference between men and animals, most of the things men feel animals feel and vice versa, but animals do not know about money, money is purely a human conception and that is very important to know very very important."
"Too few is as many as too many."
"Identity always worries me and memory and eternity."
"The periods of the world's history that have always been most dismal ones are the ones where fathers were looming and filling up everything."
"Anytime is the time to make a poem."
"Choice is always more pleasing than anything necessary."
"I was then and ever since filled with the fact that there are so many millions always living and each one is his own self inside him."
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