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„Я был богат и беден. Лучше быть богатым.“

„Чтение и письмо для меня равносильны существованию.“

„Правильно брошенный мужчина возвращается как бумеранг.“

„Нет никакого ответа.
Никакого ответа не будет.
Никакого ответа никогда не было.
Есть твой ответ.“

„Утром есть смысл, вечером есть чувство.“

„Забавно, что большинство мужчин гордятся двумя вещами, которые любой мужчина может делать в точности так же: напиваться и зачинать сыновей.“

„Деньги всегда есть, только карманы меняются.“

„Вся молодежь, побывавшая на войне. Вы — потерянное поколение.“

„Очень легко любить, когда ты один.“

„Дамы, для нас нет нейтральной позиции.“

„Продолжайте делать то, что делаете. Прикидывайтесь, что вы это делаете, и так до тех пор, пока дело не будет сделано.“

„Любой, кто трижды женился на женщинах из Сент-Луиса, немногому научился в жизни.“

„Когда бы ты не попал туда, никакого "там" там не будет.“

„Требуется куча бездельничать, чтобы написать книгу.“

„Мне нравится вид, но я люблю сидеть, повернувшись к нему спиной.“

„Вычеркнуть у автора даже самое короткое слово - все равно что вычеркнуть все.“

„Внутри себя все мы одного возраста.“

„Все, что ты делаешь каждый день, важно и внушительно, и везде, где ты живешь, интересно и красиво.“

„Трудно любить чужие идеи о том, чтобы быть смешным.“

„Если вы можете сделать это, то почему это делать?“

“The surrealists still see things as everyone sees them, they complicate them in a different way but the vision is that of everyone else, in short the complication is the complication of the twentieth century but the vision is that of the nineteenth century. Picasso only sees something else, another reality. Complications are always easy but another vision than that of all the world is very rare.”

“When General Osborne came to see me just after the victory, he asked me what I thought should be done to educate the Germans. I said there is only one thing to be done and that is to teach them disobedience, as long as they are obedient so long sooner or later they will be ordered about by a bad man and there will be trouble. Teach them disobedience, I said, make every German child know that it is its duty at least once a day to do its good deed and not believe something its father or its teacher tells them, confuse their minds, get their minds confused and perhaps then they will be disobedient and the world will be at peace. The obedient peoples go to war, disobedient people like peace, that is the reason that Italy did not really become a good Axis, the people were not obedient enough, the Japs and the Germans are the only really obedient people on earth and see what happens, teach them disobedience, confuse their minds, teach them disobedience, and the world can be peaceful. General Osborne shook his head sadly, you'll never make the heads of an army understand that.”

“And so I am an American and I have lived half my life in Paris, not the half that made me but the half in which I made what I made.”

“Argument is to me the air I breathe. Given any proposition, I cannot help believing the other side and defending it.”

“I rarely believe anything, because at the time of believing I am not really there to believe.”

“One of the pleasant things those of us who write or paint do is to have the daily miracle. It does come.”

“I don’t envisage collectivism. There is no such animal, it is always individualism, sometimes the rest vote and sometimes they do not, and if they do they do and if they do not they do not.”

“I was talking like this to the Princeton professor and he said well if these are the facts there is no hope and I said well what is hope hope is just contact with the facts.”

“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.”

“When I sleep I sleep and do not dream because it is as well that I am what I seem when I am in my bed and dream.”

“One of the things that is most striking about the young generation is that they never talk about their own futures, there are no futures for this generation, not any of them and so naturally they never think of them. It is very striking, they do not live in the present they just live, as well as they can, and they do not plan. It is extraordinary that whole populations have no projects for a future, none at all. It certainly is extraordinary, but it is certainly true.”

“Propaganda is not French, it is not civilized to want other people to believe what you believe because the essence of being civilised is to possess yourself as you are, and if you possess yourself as you are you of course cannot possess any one else, it is not your business.”

“The nineteenth century believed in science but the twentieth century does not.”

“When I said. "A rose is a rose is a rose." And then later made that into a ring I made poetry and what did I do? I caressed completely caressed and addressed a noun.”

“They wanted to know how I succeeded in getting so much publicity, I said by having a small audience, I said if you have a big audience you have no publicity, this did seem to worry them and naturally it would worry them they wanted the publicity and the big audience, and really to have the biggest publicity you have to have a small one, yes all right the biggest publicity comes from the realest poetry and the realest poetry has a small audience not a big one, but it is really exciting and therefore it has the biggest publicity, all right that is it.”

“Picasso once remarked I do not care who it is that has or does influence me as long as it is not myself.”

“The difference between a thinker and a newspaperman is that a thinker enters right into things, a newspaperman is superficial.”

“Poetry is I say essentially a vocabulary just as prose is essentially not. And what is the vocabulary of which poetry absolutely is. It is a vocabulary based on the noun as prose is essentially and determinately and vigorously not based on the noun. Poetry is concerned with using with abusing, with losing with wanting with denying with avoiding with adoring with replacing the noun. It is doing that always doing that, doing that doing nothing but that. Poetry is doing nothing but using losing refusing and pleasing and betraying and caressing nouns. That is what poetry does, that is what poetry has to do no matter what kind of poetry it is. And there are a great many kinds of poetry. So that is poetry really loving the name of anything and that is not prose.”

“If you do not remember while you are writing, it may seem confused to others but actually it is clear and eventually that clarity will be clear, that is what a master-piece is, but if you remember while you are writing it will seem clear at the time to any one but the clarity will go out of it that is what a master-piece is not.”

“Gertrude Stein, in her work, has always been possessed by the intellectual passion for exactitude in the description of the inner and outer reality. She has reproduced 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 never be the cause of emotion nor should they be the material of poetry or prose. Nor should emotion itself be the cause of poetry and prose. They should consist of an exact reproduction of either an outer or inner reality.”

“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 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.”

“It often makes me know that as a cousin of mine once said about money, 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.”

“Since it could be done what was the use of doing it, and anyway you always have to stop doing something sometime.”

“The idea of enemies is awful it makes one stop remembering eternity and the fear of death. That is what enemies are. Possessions are the same as enemies only less so, they too make one forget eternity and the fear of death.”

“The creator of the new composition in the arts is an outlaw until he is a classic.”

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

“No sense in no sense innocence of what of not and what of delight. In no sense innocence in no sense and what in delight and not, in no sense innocence in no sense no sense what, in no sense and delight, and in no sense and delight and not in no sense and delight and not, no sense in no sense innocence and delight.”

“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.”

“Perhaps I am not I even if my little dog knows me but anyway I like what I have and now it is today.”