"It is always a mistake to be plain-spoken"
About this Quote
Stein’s line lands like a paradox with a smirk: the modernist who made a career out of refusing plain sense warns you not to speak plainly. It’s not a cozy bit of etiquette; it’s a theory of power and perception. “Always” is the tell. She isn’t recommending tact in delicate situations, she’s arguing that plain speech is structurally naive - a faith that words can travel unmolested from speaker to listener, untouched by ego, suspicion, social hierarchy, or the listener’s private weather.
In Stein’s world, language is never a transparent pane; it’s a crowded room. To be plain-spoken is to pretend the room is empty. That pretense becomes the “mistake.” It hands other people the easiest handle: they can pin you down, quote you cleanly, take you literally, reduce you to a position. Plainness is a form of self-exposure that masquerades as honesty. It invites the bureaucratic urge to file you away, the moralist’s urge to prosecute you, the gossip’s urge to weaponize you.
Context matters. Stein wrote amid the avant-garde of early 20th-century Paris, where identity, sexuality, and politics often had to be navigated obliquely, and where the new art was busy proving that clarity can be a trap. Her own prose, with its repetitions and sideways logic, is a sustained refusal to let the reader consume meaning in one bite. The subtext: ambiguity isn’t cowardice; it’s a kind of authorship. Don’t just speak - stage-manage how you’ll be understood.
In Stein’s world, language is never a transparent pane; it’s a crowded room. To be plain-spoken is to pretend the room is empty. That pretense becomes the “mistake.” It hands other people the easiest handle: they can pin you down, quote you cleanly, take you literally, reduce you to a position. Plainness is a form of self-exposure that masquerades as honesty. It invites the bureaucratic urge to file you away, the moralist’s urge to prosecute you, the gossip’s urge to weaponize you.
Context matters. Stein wrote amid the avant-garde of early 20th-century Paris, where identity, sexuality, and politics often had to be navigated obliquely, and where the new art was busy proving that clarity can be a trap. Her own prose, with its repetitions and sideways logic, is a sustained refusal to let the reader consume meaning in one bite. The subtext: ambiguity isn’t cowardice; it’s a kind of authorship. Don’t just speak - stage-manage how you’ll be understood.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
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