W. G. Rogers, who wrote his recollections of Stein in the book When This You See, Remember Me (1948), made the following point in a review of a posthumous volume of Stein's writings in 1955:

As always when at her best, she uses double talk to arrive at plain meanings: she adds nothing and nothing and gets something; her sum is an emotional impact; an excitment, an undeniable deep stirring. This is the marvel and the mystery of her language; it can be an incantation, and like the lingo of the medicine man, it can say little while accomplishing a lot. You don't blame it for what it is, you credit it for what it does.