"It is awfully important to know what is and what is not your business"
About this Quote
Awfully is doing quiet sabotage here. Stein isn’t offering a prim little etiquette tip about minding your manners; she’s drawing a border in a world that constantly tries to erase them. Coming from an author who made a career out of refusing conventional sense-making, the line reads like a paradox with teeth: the woman famous for breaking rules is insisting on one rule that keeps you sane.
The intent is practical, almost surgical. “Know” implies labor, not instinct. Stein frames boundaries as a form of literacy: you have to learn what belongs to you - your work, your attention, your desires - and what doesn’t. That matters in any era, but it’s especially pointed in hers: a time when women’s ambitions were routinely treated as communal property, subject to correction, commentary, and containment. Her Paris circle thrived on intense exchange, gossip, aesthetic judgments, and ego. In that atmosphere, deciding what is not your business becomes a survival skill, not a moral stance.
The subtext is about power. “Your business” isn’t only private life; it’s vocation, authority, and the right to choose where your energy goes. Stein’s phrasing also flips the usual suspicion: boundaries aren’t selfishness, they’re clarity. Knowing what isn’t your business isn’t withdrawal; it’s refusal to be conscripted into other people’s dramas, orthodoxies, or definitions of you.
It lands because it’s blunt, slightly funny, and defensively wise - the kind of sentence you arrive at after watching how distraction, obligation, and other people’s expectations can quietly steal a life.
The intent is practical, almost surgical. “Know” implies labor, not instinct. Stein frames boundaries as a form of literacy: you have to learn what belongs to you - your work, your attention, your desires - and what doesn’t. That matters in any era, but it’s especially pointed in hers: a time when women’s ambitions were routinely treated as communal property, subject to correction, commentary, and containment. Her Paris circle thrived on intense exchange, gossip, aesthetic judgments, and ego. In that atmosphere, deciding what is not your business becomes a survival skill, not a moral stance.
The subtext is about power. “Your business” isn’t only private life; it’s vocation, authority, and the right to choose where your energy goes. Stein’s phrasing also flips the usual suspicion: boundaries aren’t selfishness, they’re clarity. Knowing what isn’t your business isn’t withdrawal; it’s refusal to be conscripted into other people’s dramas, orthodoxies, or definitions of you.
It lands because it’s blunt, slightly funny, and defensively wise - the kind of sentence you arrive at after watching how distraction, obligation, and other people’s expectations can quietly steal a life.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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