Dorothy Parker Quotes

188 Sourced Quotes

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
I had been fed, in my youth, a lot of old wives' tales about the way men would instantly forsake a beautiful woman to flock around a brilliant one. It is but fair to say that, after getting out in the world, I had never seen this happen.

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

Dorothy Parker
There are times when images blow to fluff, and comparisons stiffen and shrivel.

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

Dorothy Parker
Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.

Dorothy Parker
On her abortion:
It serves me right for putting all my eggs in one bastard.

Dorothy Parker
The nowadays ruling that no word is unprintable has, I think, done nothing whatever for beautiful letters.... Obscenity is too valuable a commodity to chuck around all over the place; it should be taken out of the safe on special occasions only.

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

Dorothy Parker
Writing a book for the Follies seems to be about as profitable an occupation as furnishing flannel petticoats for the showgirls.

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

Dorothy Parker
If you arrive late, you won't know what anything is about, and if you are there all the way from the beginning, you won't care.

Dorothy Parker
In youth, it was a way I had
To do my best to please,
And change, with every passing lad,
To suit his theories.
But now I know the things I know,
And do the things I do,
And if you do not like me so,
To hell, my love, with you!

Dorothy Parker
Woman lives but in her lord;
Count to ten, and man is bored.
With this the gist and sum of it,
What earthly good can come of it?

Dorothy Parker
In short, there is everything about this season's entertainment to make the Hippodrome what it always is—a Temple of the Arts to all those who hang pennants on their automobiles, use Shake hands with my friend as a formula for introduction, and sprinkle powdered sugar on their sliced tomatoes.

Dorothy Parker
And I'll stay away from Verlaine too; he was always chasing Rimbauds.

Dorothy Parker
It's not the tragedies that kill us; it's the messes.

Dorothy Parker
I'm never going to accomplish anything; that's perfectly clear to me. I'm never going to be famous. My name will never be writ large on the roster of Those Who Do Things. I don't do anything. Not one single thing. I used to bite my nails, but I don't even do that any more.

Dorothy Parker
It has lately been drawn to your correspondent's attention that, at social gatherings, she is not the human magnet she would be. Indeed, it turns out that as a source of entertainment, conviviality, and good fun, she ranks somewhere between a sprig of parsley and a single ice-skate.

Dorothy Parker
There was always something immensely comic to her in the thought of living elsewhere than New York. She could not regard as serious proposals that she share a western residence.

Dorothy Parker
You do what you can, and you do it because you should. But all you can do is all you can do.

Dorothy Parker
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
Should they whisper false of you, Never trouble to deny; Should the words they say be true, Weep and storm and say they lie.

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
I give her sadness and the gift of pain,
a new moon madness and a love of rain.

Dorothy Parker
I fell into writing, I suppose, being one of those awful children who wrote verses.

Dorothy Parker
Scratch an actor and you'll find an actress.

Dorothy Parker
All I need is room enough to lay a hat and a few friends.

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
After my father died there wasn't any money. I had to work, you see, and Mr. Crowninshield, God rest his soul, paid twelve dollars for a small verse of mine and gave me a job at ten dollars a week.

Dorothy Parker