Dorothy Parker Quotes - Page 10

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• The nowadays ruling that no word is unprintable has, I think, done nothing whatever for beautiful letters. The boys have gone hog-wild with liberty, yet the short flat terms used over and over, both in dialogue and narrative, add neither vigor nor clarity; the effect is not of shock but of something far more dangerous — tedium.

  Dorothy Parker

  Beautiful, Thinking, Boys

  6 Copy quote

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

  Dorothy Parker

  Cute, Should Have, Terrible

  Dorothy Parker (2004). “Dorothy Parker in Her Own Words”, Taylor Trade Publishing

  8 Copy quote

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

  Dorothy Parker

  Friendship, Sorrow, Four

  "Inventory" l. 1 (1926)

  6 Copy quote

• Everybody's got their troubles.

  Dorothy Parker

  Trouble

  Dorothy Parker (2002). “Complete Stories”, p.117, Penguin

  5 Copy quote

• Her big heart did not, as is so sadly often the case, inhabit a big bosom.

  Dorothy Parker

  Heart, Bigs, Cases

  Dorothy Parker (1944). “Dorothy Parker”

  12 Copy quote

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

  Dorothy Parker

  Writing, Thinking, Six Months

  The Paris Review, 1956.

  7 Copy quote

• London is satisfied, Paris is resigned, but New York is always hopeful. Always it believes that something good is about to come off, and it must hurry to meet it.

  Dorothy Parker

  New York, Believe, Paris

  9 Copy quote

• Love is like quicksilver in the hand.

  Dorothy Parker

  Lost Love, Love Is, Hands

  Dorothy Parker (2002). “Complete Stories”, p.178, Penguin

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  Morning, Stars, Tired

  Dorothy Parker (1936). “Not So Deep as a Well”, Macmillan Company of Canada

  9 Copy quote

• There was a reason for the cost of those perfectly plain black dresses.

  Dorothy Parker

  Black, Dresses, Cost

  Dorothy Parker (1944). “Dorothy Parker”

  4 Copy quote

• I'll think about something else. I'll just sit quietly. If I could sit still. If I could sit still, maybe I could read. Oh, all the books are about people who love each other, truly and sweetly. What do they want to write about that for? Don't they know it isn't true? Don't they know it's a lie, it's a God-damned lie? What do they have to tell about that for, when they know how it hurts?

  Dorothy Parker

  Hurt, Lying, Book

  Dorothy Parker (2002). “Complete Stories”, p.80, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

• And there was that poor sucker Flaubert rolling around on his floor for three days looking for the right word.

  Dorothy Parker

  Rolling, Three, Poor

  Quoted in Paris Review, Summer 1956

  8 Copy quote

• Oh, both my shoes are shiny new, And pristine is my hat My dress is 1922… My life is all like that.

  Dorothy Parker

  Shoes, Dresses, Hats

  Dorothy Parker, “Autobiography”

  7 Copy quote

• If I should labor through daylight and dark, Consecrate, valorous, serious, true, Then on the world I may blazon my mark; And what if I don't, and what if I do?

  Dorothy Parker

  Dark, What If, World

  Dorothy Parker (1944). “Dorothy Parker”

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Heart, Men, Two

  Dorothy Parker (2004). “Dorothy Parker in Her Own Words”, Taylor Trade Publishing

  9 Copy quote

• I find her anecdotes more efficacious than sheep-counting, rain on a tin roof, or alanol tablets.... you will find me and Morpheus, off in a corner, necking.

  Dorothy Parker

  Rain, Sheep, Anecdotes

  8 Copy quote

• Perhaps it suddenly brought to us the sense of change. Or irresponsibility. But don't forget that, though the people in the twenties seemed like flops, they weren't. Fitzgerald, the rest of them, reckless as they were, drinkers as they were, they worked damn hard and all the time.

  Dorothy Parker

  People, Twenties, Forget

  5 Copy quote

• Art is a form of catharsis.

  Dorothy Parker

  Art, Catharsis, Form

  Dorothy Parker (1944). “Dorothy Parker”

  8 Copy quote

• He lies below, correct in cypress wood, And entertains the most exclusive worms.

  Dorothy Parker

  Lying, Woods, Cypresses

  Dorothy Parker (1944). “Dorothy Parker”

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Kings, Writing, Trying

  Dorothy Parker (1970). “A month of Saturdays: thirty-one famous pieces by "Constant Reader"”

  4 Copy quote

• [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

  Book, Character, Ice

  Dorothy Parker (2004). “Dorothy Parker in Her Own Words”, Taylor Trade Publishing

  4 Copy quote

• It's easier to write about those you hate — just as it's easier to criticize a bad play or a bad book.

  Dorothy Parker

  Hate, Book, Writing

  Dorothy Parker, Stuart Y. Silverstein (2009). “Not Much Fun: The Lost Poems of Dorothy Parker”, p.41, Simon and Schuster

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• Scratch a lover, and find a foe.

  Dorothy Parker

  Love, Enemy, Scratches

  "Ballade of a Great Weariness" l. 8 (1926)

  21 Copy quote

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

  Dorothy Parker

  Years, People, Age

  Dorothy Parker (1970). “A month of Saturdays: thirty-one famous pieces by "Constant Reader"”

  5 Copy quote

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

  Dorothy Parker

  Men, People, Endurance

  Dorothy Parker (2004). “Dorothy Parker in Her Own Words”, Taylor Trade Publishing

  4 Copy quote

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