Dorothy Parker Quotes

188 Sourced Quotes

Sure, you make money writing on the coast... but that money is like so much compressed snow. It goes so fast it melts in your hand.

Dorothy Parker
Van and Schenck put their songs over so skillfully that it isn't until their act is all done that you realize what extremely indifferent songs they are. Now, when John Steel is singing, on the other hand, you are never fooled for a moment.

Dorothy Parker
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
The play holds the season's record, thus far, with a run of four evening performances and one matinée. By an odd coincidence, it ran just five performances too many.

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