When you make a thing, it is so complicated making it that it is bound to be ugly.

The line is presented in Gertrude Stein’s 1933 book "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas" (written by Stein in Toklas’s voice) during a conversation about viewing artworks at an exhibition preview. Toklas criticizes some Picasso paintings as unpleasant, and Stein responds by attributing to Picasso an explanation that genuinely new work is difficult to make and therefore tends to look ugly at first, while later imitators can make similar work look attractive because the hard inventive work has already been done.

The remark argues that originality carries an initial aesthetic cost: inventing a new form involves solving many problems at once, so early versions can appear rough or unattractive. Once the innovation exists, others can refine the surface and make it more pleasing, which often wins broader approval.

When you make a thing, it is so complicated making it that it is bound to be ugly, but those that do it after you they don’t have to worry about making it and they can make it pretty, and so everybody can like it when the others make it.

When you make a thing, a thing that is new, it is so complicated making it that it is bound to be ugly.