News at Eleven: "Look here," Gertrude Stein begins briskly,

on the opening track of American Writers, when an anonymous interviewer suggests that her libretto for the opera Four Saints in Three Acts is beyond comprehension, "being intelligible is not what it seems. . . . Everybody has their own English and it is only a matter of anybody getting used to an English, anybody's English, and then it's all right. . . . You mean by understanding that you can talk about it in the way that you have a habit of talking, putting it in other words, but I mean by understanding, enjoyment. If you enjoy it, you understand it, and lots of people have enjoyed it, so lots of people have understood it." Whew!

from The Smithsonian: Voices from Literature's Past

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