“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, which is to say that creation must take place between the pen and the paper, not before in a thought or afterwards in a recasting... It will come if it is there and if you will let it come.”

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.