Dorothy Parker Quotes

Go to the Martin Beck Theatre and watch Katherine Hepburn run the gamut of emotions from A to B. ~ Dorothy Parker

If Robert Benchley and Dorothy Parker had teamed up to write epic fantasy, something like Split Heirs might have resulted. ~ John DeChancie

Hollywood money isn't money. It's congealed snow, melts in your hand, and there you are. ~ Dorothy Parker

Once I was coming down a street in Beverly Hills and I saw a Cadillac about a block long, and out of the side window was a wonderfully slinky mink, and an arm, and at the end of the arm a hand in a white suede glove wrinkled around the wrist, and in the hand was a bagel with a bite out of it. ~ Dorothy Parker

My own dear love, he is all my world -
And I wish I'd never met him. ~ Dorothy Parker

LINSCOTT: Well, I don't like it. Man works damn hard, leaves his wife all his money, and some pretty boy comes along and gets it. Sometimes I think those old East Indians had the right idea about widows. Cremate the husbands and burn up the wives along with them.
CONNIE: Maybe it would be simpler to burn up the money. ~ Dorothy Parker

Then if my friendships break and bend, There's little need to cry The while I know that every foe Is faithful till I die. ~ Dorothy Parker

A girl's best friend is her mutter. ~ Dorothy Parker

Like many a better one before me, I have gone down under the force of numbers, under the books and books and books that keep coming out and coming out and coming out, shoals of them, spates of them, flash floods of them, too blame many books, and no sign of an end. ~ Dorothy Parker

Every year, back comes Spring, with nasty little birds yapping their fool heads off and the ground all mucked up with plants. ~ Dorothy Parker

A hangover is the wrath of grapes. ~ Dorothy Parker

People Who Do Things exceed my endurance;
God, for a man that solicits insurance! ~ Dorothy Parker

I am a writer who does not enjoy writing. I can find innumerable ways to avoid it. But, to rip off Dorothy Parker, nothing else - nothing - gives me the same thrill as having written. I'm the same way with knitting. The process is fine, mind you, and keeps my hands busy. But nothing else - nothing - gives me the rush that I get from finishing something.

"The parallels between writing and knitting go even further. Like writing, knitting has a finite number of raw ingredients. There are twenty-six letters in the alphabet. Those letters can combine to give you David Foster Wallace or freshman composition papers. There are only two basic stitches: the knit and the purl. Those stitches can add up to a gorgeously complicated sweater or a pastel pink toilet paper cozy. The difference is in the mind that shapes them. ~ Adrienne Martini

tomorrow's gone-we'll have tonight! ~ Dorothy Parker

Their pooled emotions wouldn't fill a teaspoon. ~ Dorothy Parker

He'll be cross if he sees I have been crying. They don't like you to cry. He doesn't cry. I wish to God I could make him cry. I wish I could make him cry and tread the floor and feel his heart heavy and big and festering in him. I wish I could hurt him like hell.
He doesn't wish that about me. I don't think he even knows how he makes me feel. I wish he could know, without my telling him. They don't like you to tell them they've made you cry. They don't like you to tell them you're unhappy because of them. If you do, they think you're possessive and exacting. And then they hate you. They hate you whenever you say anything you really think. You always have to keep playing little games. Oh, I thought we didn't have to; I thought this was so big I could say whatever I meant. I guess you can't, ever. I guess there isn't ever anything big enough for that. ~ Dorothy Parker

I won't telephone him. I'll never telephone him again as long as I live. He'll rot in hell, before I'll call him up. You don't have to give me strength, God; I have it myself. If he wanted me, he could get me. He knows where I am. He knows I'm waiting here. He's so sure of me, so sure. I wonder why they hate you, as soon as they are sure of you. ~ Dorothy Parker

Men
They hail you as their morning star
Because you are the way you are.
If you return the sentiment,
They'll try to make you different;
And once they have you, safe and sound,
They want to change you all around.
Your moods and ways they put a curse on;
They'd make of you another person.
They cannot let you go your gait;
They influence and educate.
They'd alter all that they admired.
They make me sick, they make me tired. ~ Dorothy Parker

Women and elephants never forget. ~ Dorothy Parker

Upton Sinclair is his own King Charles' head. He cannot keep himself out of his writings, try though he may; or, by this time, try though he doesn't. ~ Dorothy Parker

[At the reception following her remarriage to Alan Campbell:] People who haven't talked to each other in years are on speaking terms again today - including the bride and groom. ~ Dorothy Parker

Innocence is a desirable thing, a dainty thing, an appealing thing, in its place; but carried too far, it is merely ridiculous. ~ Dorothy Parker

Ah, clear they see and true they say
That one shall weep, and one shall stray ~ Dorothy Parker

I'll have a martini...two at the most. Three, I'm under the table...four, I'm under the host. ~ Dorothy Parker

I fell into writing, I suppose, being one of those awful children who wrote verses. I went to a convent in New York-the Blessed Sacrament ... I was fired from there, finally, for a lot of things, among them my insistence that the Immaculate Conception was spontaneous combustion. ~ Dorothy Parker

On lady novelists: As artists they're rot, but as providers they're oil wells; they gush. Norris said she never wrote a story unless it was fun to do. I understand Ferber whistles at her typewriter. ~ Dorothy Parker

There's life for you. Spend the best years of your life studying penmanship and rhetoric and syntax and Beowulf and George Eliot, and then somebody steals your pencil. ~ Dorothy Parker

Some men break your heart in two, Some men fawn and flatter, Some men never look at you; And that cleans up the matter. ~ Dorothy Parker

Into love and out again, Thus I went and thus I go. Spare your voice, and hold your pen: Well and bitterly I know All the songs were ever sung, All the words were ever said; Could it be, when I was young, Someone dropped me on my head? ~ Dorothy Parker

You can't teach an old dogma new tricks. ~ Dorothy Parker

Take me or leave me; or, as is the usual order of things, both. ~ Dorothy Parker

Most good women are hidden treasures who are only safe because nobody looks for them. ~ Dorothy Parker

[On Edna Ferber's Ice Palace] ... the book, which is going to be a movie, has the plot and characters of a book which is going to be a movie. ~ Dorothy Parker

Vice is nice, but liquor is quicker. ~ Dorothy Parker

People are more than fun than anybody. ~ Dorothy Parker

As for helping me in the outside world, the Convent taught me only that if you spit on a pencil eraser, it will erase ink. ~ Dorothy Parker

Don't feel bad when I die; I've been dead for a long time. ~ Dorothy Parker

What writes worse than a Theodore Dreiser? ... Two Theodore Dreisers. ~ Dorothy Parker

Now I know the things I know, and I do the things I do; and if you do not like me so, to hell, my love, with you! ~ Dorothy Parker

The cleverest woman on earth is the biggest fool on earth with a man. ~ Dorothy Parker

You don't want a general houseworker, do you? Or a traveling companion, quiet, refined, speaks fluent French entirely in the present tense? Or an assistant billiard-maker? Or a private librarian? Or a lady car-washer? Because if you do, I should appreciate your giving me a trial at the job. Any minute now, I am going to become one of the Great Unemployed. I am about to leave literature flat on its face. I don't want to review books any more. It cuts in too much on my reading. ~ Dorothy Parker

Please don't let me hope, dear God. Please don't. I ~ Dorothy Parker

"Hence," goes on the professor, "definitions of happiness are interesting." I suppose the best thing to do with that is to let is pass. Me, I never saw a definition of happiness that could detain me after train-time, but that may be a matter of lack of opportunity, of inattention, or of congenital rough luck. If definitions of happiness can keep Professor Phelps on his toes, that is little short of dandy. We might just as well get on along to the next statement, which goes like this: "One of the best" (we are still on definitions of happiness) "was given in my Senior year at college by Professor Timothy Dwight: 'The happiest person is the person who thinks the most interesting thoughts.'" Promptly one starts recalling such Happiness Boys as Nietzche, Socrates, de Maupassant, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, William Blake, and Poe."
-Review of the book, Happiness, by (Professor) William Lyon Phelps. Review title: The Professor Goes in for Sweetness and Light; November 5, 1927 ~ Dorothy Parker

I wish he were dead. That's a terrible wish. That's a lovely wish. If he were dead, he would be mine. If he were dead, I would never think of now and the last few weeks. I would remember only the lovely times. It would be all beautiful. I wish he were dead. I wish he were dead, dead, dead. ~ Dorothy Parker

Four things I am wiser to know: Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe. ~ Dorothy Parker

I wanted to be cute. That's the terrible thing. I should have had more sense. ~ Dorothy Parker

I might repeat to myself, slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound; if I can remember any of the damn things. ~ Dorothy Parker

Oh, anywhere, driver, anywhere - it doesn't matter. Just keep driving.
It's better here in this taxi than it was walking. It's no good my trying to walk. There is always a glimpse through the crowd of someone who looks like him - someone with his swing of the shoulders, his slant of the hat. And I think it's he, I think he's come back. And my heart goes to scalding water and the buildings sway and bend above me. No, it's better to be here. But I wish the driver would go fast, so fast that people walking by would be a long gray blur, and I could see no swinging shoulders, no slanted hat.
Dorothy Parker, Sentiment, Harper's Bazaar, May 1933. ~ Dorothy Parker

Brevity is the soul of lingerie. ~ Dorothy Parker

I know that an author must be brave enough to chop away clinging tentacles of good taste for the sake of a great work. But this is no great work, you see. ~ Dorothy Parker

Travel, trouble, music, art, a kiss, a frock, a rhyme
I never said they feed my heart, but still they pass my time. ~ Dorothy Parker

[On being told party guests were ducking for apples:] There, but for a typographical error, is the story of my life. ~ Dorothy Parker

Maybe it is only I, but conditions are such these days, that if you use studiously correct grammar, people suspect you of homosexual tendencies. ~ Dorothy Parker

Her mind lives tidily, apart from cold and noise and pain. And bolts the door against her heart, out wailing in the rain. ~ Dorothy Parker

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity. ~ Dorothy Parker

Once, when I was young and true. Someone left me sad - Broke my brittle heart in two; And that is very bad. Love is for unlucky folk, Love is but a curse. Once there was a heart I broke; And that, I think, is worse. ~ Dorothy Parker

Salary is no object: I want only enough to keep body and soul apart. ~ Dorothy Parker

And if my heart be scarred and burned,
The safer, I, for all I learned. ~ Dorothy Parker

I'm quite all right. I'm not even scared. You see, I've learned from looking around, there is something worse than loneliness - and that's the fear of it." - Dorothy Parker ~ Nicole Archer

By the time you swear you're his, shivering and sighing, And he vows his passion is infinite,undying-Lady,make a note of this: One of you is lying ~ Dorothy Parker

The sweeter the apple, the blacker the core. Scratch a lover and find a foe! ~ Dorothy Parker

I wish I could drink like a lady
I can take one or two at the most
Three and I'm under the table
Four and I'm under the host. ~ Dorothy Parker

Civilization is coming to an end, you understand. ~ Dorothy Parker

But I don't give up; I forget why not. ~ Dorothy Parker

The best way to keep children at home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant, and let the air out of the tires. ~ Dorothy Parker

I like to have a martini,
Two at the very most.
After three I'm under the table,
after four I'm under my host. ~ Dorothy Parker

When asked by her publisher why her work had not been submitted while on her honeymoon: I've been too fucking busy or vice versa ~ Dorothy Parker

Age before beauty, and pearls before swine. ~ Dorothy Parker

Sunlight dusts them; Water is damp; Crosses pain them; And beheadings cause cramps - ~ Thomm Quackenbush

Then she told herself to stop her nonsense. If you looked for things to make you feel hurt and wretched and unnecessary, you were certain to find them, more easily each time, so easily, soon, that you did not even realize you had gone out searching. Women alone often developed into experts at the practice. She must never join their dismal league. ~ Dorothy Parker

LINSCOTT: Well, life certainly treats you fine.
CONNIE: No, Tom. Life and I go Dutch. ~ Dorothy Parker

According to that book, only one Marx contributed an unforgotten pun to the Round Tablers' vaunted word games. It wasn't Groucho, who must have been furious. Nor was it Harpo, who for all we know sat at the table naked. Nor was it Chico, who had more dangerous games elsewhere. It was Gummo. Evidently Gummo had a seat at that table at least once, and he made it count. Everybody knows that Dorothy Parker, challenged to make a sentence with the word horticulture, quipped as follows: "You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think." But who knew that Gummo, taking on euphoria, came up with this: LEFT TO RIGHT: Harpo, Zeppo, Chico, Groucho, and Gummo, 1957. "Go outside and play," Minnie told the brothers. "Which ones?" they asked. And she said: "Euphoria."* ~ Roy Blount, Jr.

There is entirely too much charm around, and something must be done to stop it. ~ Dorothy Parker

The two most beautiful words in the English language are 'cheque enclosed. ~ Dorothy Parker

Emily Post's Etiquette is out again, this time in a new and an enlarged edition, and so the question of what to do with my evenings has been all fixed up for me. ~ Dorothy Parker

Gertrude Stein did us the most harm when she said, 'You're all a lost generation.' That got around to certain people and we all said, 'Whee! We're lost. ~ Dorothy Parker

If Lady Gaga and Dorothy Parker had a secret love child, it would've been Gypsy Rose Lee. Gypsy arrived for opening nights at the Met wearing a full-length cape made entirely of orchids, while Lady Gaga shows up wearing a full-length cloak made of meat. ~ Karen Abbott

Writing well is the best revenge. ~ Dorothy Parker

When I was young and bold and strong,
The right was right, the wrong was wrong.
With plume on high and flag unfurled,
I rode away to right the world.
But now I'm old - and good and bad,
Are woven in a crazy plaid.
I sit and say the world is so,
And wise is s/he who lets it go. ~ Dorothy Parker

My land is bare of chattering folk; / the clouds are low along the ridges, / and sweet's the air with curly smoke / from all my burning bridges. ~ Dorothy Parker

Summer makes me drowsy. Autumn makes me sing. Winter's pretty lousy, but I hate Spring. ~ Dorothy Parker

[On hearing that President Coolidge was dead:] How can you tell? ~ Dorothy Parker

Quick!! Act as if nothing has happened! ~ Dorothy Parker

People are more fun than anyone. ~ Dorothy Parker

Prince or commoner, tenor or bass,
Painter or plumber or never-do-well,
Do me a favor and shut your face -
Poets alone should kiss and tell. ~ Dorothy Parker

I was always sweet, at first. Oh, it's so easy to be sweet to people before you love them. ~ Dorothy Parker

And where does she find them? ~ Dorothy Parker

Yet, as only New Yorkers know, if you can get through the twilight, you'll live through the night. ~ Dorothy Parker

Los Angeles: Seventy-two suburbs in search of a city. ~ Dorothy Parker

I hate almost all rich people, but I think I'd be darling at it. ~ Dorothy Parker

If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular? ~ Dorothy Parker

There's little in taking or giving, There's little in water or wine: This living, this living, this living, Was never a project of mine. Oh, hard is the struggle, and sparse is The gain of the one at the top, For art is a form of catharsis, And love is a permanent flop, And work is the province of cattle, And rest's for a clam in a shell, So I'm thinking of throwing the battle - Would you kindly direct me to hell? ~ Dorothy Parker

Gratitude - the meanest and most snivelling attribute in the world. ~ Dorothy Parker

It takes me six months to do a story. I think it out and write it sentence by sentence - no first draft. I can't write five words but that I can change seven. ~ Dorothy Parker

Hold your pen and spare your voice. ~ Dorothy Parker

The Swiss are a neat and an industrious people, none of whom is under seventy-five years of age. ~ Dorothy Parker

[Hospitalized and pressing the nurse's button before dictating letters to her secretary:] This should assure us of at least forty-five minutes of undisturbed privacy. ~ Dorothy Parker

For herself, she declared that she paid no attention to her birthdays - didn't give a hoot about them; and it is true that when you have amassed several dozen of the same sort of thing, it loses that rarity which is the excitement of collectors. ~ Dorothy Parker

[To woman bragging about having kept her husband for seven years:] Don't worry, if you keep him long enough, he'll come back in style. ~ Dorothy Parker

[To the British actor who annoyed her by repeated references to his busy 'shedule':] I think you're full of skit. ~ Dorothy Parker