“Supposing everyone lived at one time what would they say. They would observe that stringing string beans is universal.”

American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector

Gertrude Stein was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. She became a central figure in Parisian modernist circles after moving to France in 1903, and she spent the rest of her life there. She hosted a salon in Paris that brought together major writers and artists of the era, including Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Ezra Pound, Sherwood Anderson, and Henri Matisse. Her place in literary history rests on that role as much as on her own writing.