Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.
NUMBER:
989
AUTHOR:
Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
QUOTATION:
“What is the answer?” she asked, and when no answer came she laughed and said: “Then, what is the question?”
ATTRIBUTION:
GERTRUDE STEIN, last words, according to Elizabeth Sprigge, Gertrude Stein, Her Life and Work, p. 265 (1957).
“What is the answer?… In that case … what is the question?” is the version in What Is Remembered (1963) by Alice B. Toklas, p. 173, though these are not specifically labeled Stein’s last words.
