Dorothy Parker Quotes

188 Sourced Quotes

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

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

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

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

Dorothy Parker
When your bank account is so overdrawn that it is positively photographic, steps must be taken.

Dorothy Parker
Well, there are always those who cannot distinguish between glitter and glamour... the glamour of Isadora Duncan came from her great, torn, bewildered, foolhardy soul.

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

Dorothy Parker
A lady … with all the poise of the Sphinx though but little of her mystery.

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

Dorothy Parker
Authors and actors and artists and such - Never know nothing, and never know much.

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

Dorothy Parker
For this my mother wrapped me warm,
And called me home against the storm,
And coaxed my infant nights to quiet,
And gave me roughage in my diet,
And tucked me in my bed at eight,
And clipped my hair, and marked my weight,
And watched me as I sat and stood:
That I might grow to womanhood
To hear a whistle and drop my wits
And break my heart to clattering bits.

Dorothy Parker
Sinbad is produced in accordance with the fine old Shubert precept that nothing succeeds like undress.

Dorothy Parker
Lady, lady, should you meet
One whose ways are all discreet,
One who murmurs that his wife
Is the lodestar of his life,
One who keeps assuring you
That he never was untrue,
Never loved another one...
Lady, lady, better run!

Dorothy Parker
Bewildered is the fox who lives to find that grapes beyond reach can be really sour.

Dorothy Parker
It is our national joy to mistake for the first-rate, the fecund rate.

Dorothy Parker
Somewhere, there, is an analogy, in a small way, if you have the patience for it. But I guess it isn't a very good anecdote. I'm better at animal stories.

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
His books are exciting and powerful and — if I may filch the word from the booksy ones — pulsing.

Dorothy Parker
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania.

Dorothy Parker
That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment.

Dorothy Parker