Pablo Picasso, Portrait of Gertrude Stein, 1906.

From Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein, a collection of experimental prose and “word portraits” written by Gertrude Stein between 1909 and 1912. Stein, who was born on this day in 1874, had arrived in Paris by 1903 and began to develop a kind of literary Cubism, steeping herself in the art of Picasso, Matisse, and others. These pieces saw her evolving approach to aphorism and especially to repetition, the device she made her trademark, even if it chagrined some early readers.

To lie in the cheese, to smile in the butter, to lengthen in the rain, to sit in the flour all that makes a model stronger, there is no strangeness where there is more useful color, a description has not every mission.

Leaning together and destroying a principle preciousness which is not mangled, this is so loaned that there is no habit, not at all and yet there is the late way, there is an instance of more.

To be painful is not more than a street, to be a principal apricot is not more than a cherry and yet there is an expression, there certainly is.

Left hand and right, the knee and no chapter, the pleasure of prophecy is in the direct adhesion of most of the pearls. This is so attending and the mixture which is as yet a marigold has the proof and the price it has all the constitution and the west of the dinner. This does not mean more harm. It means the lingering station, it means appetite and ice-cream. It does not.

Plaque which is not municipal and ardent is not more a stroke than any birthday. So much is there no moon in the evening.

Name and place and more besides makes the time so gloomy, all the shade is in the sun and lessons have the place of noon. There is no gender.

The best way is to say than an appetite resembles a season, it has fish. Playing more means that a tail is in the kite and anyway of tying that is dissimilar.

No season is plentiful, any season has more juice than snow, any season is so rickety. The silence and the sinking of the morning sun means no more than every habit. The town is in that place. There is a size corset. The bloom is on the dog and the paws are startling. It lightens more chain than a cockatoo. This does make a noise. This does show all that.

An alarm has no button. This means that where there is undoubtedly a magnificent heap of cats there is more there than any place there is. There does show the authority that has no substitute. It must be expressed that there is a difference between that which is seen and that which is mean. Something must be the other. There is a name that is written and printing does not mean. It means that very often and it shows the same metal as the trial. There is so much use. When is there more betrayal. The answer is always.

Pleading for a cat means no more than most and enough is celebrated to distinguish every department. All the buttons are in the medium and they do not shine more then that lead. There is such a heavy suit. There is a tail. There is a bewildering destruction of simple linings. There is so much ice-cream.