Dorothy Parker - Word Quotes

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But I give you my word, in the entire book there is nothing that cannot be said aloud in mixed company. And there is, also, nothing that makes you a bit the wiser. I wonder—oh, what will you think of me—if those two statements do not verge upon the synonymous.

Dorothy Parker
On being told of Calvin Coolidge's death:
How do they know? (Coolidge was well-known for being a man of very few words.)

Dorothy Parker
She will never win him, whose words had shown she feared to lose.

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

Dorothy Parker
Little Words When you are gone, there is nor bloom nor leaf, Nor singing sea at night, nor silver birds; And I can only stare, and shape my grief In little words. I cannot conjure loveliness, to drown The bitter woe that racks my cords apart. The weary pen that sets my sorrow down Feeds at my heart. There is no mercy in the shifting year, No beauty wraps me tenderly about. I turn to little words- so you, my dear, Can spell them out.

Dorothy Parker
Daily dawns another day; I must up, to make my way. Though I dress and drink and eat, Move my fingers and my feet, Learn a little, here and there, Weep and laugh and sweat and swear, Hear a song, or watch a stage, Leave some words upon a page, Claim a foe, or hail a friend- Bed awaits me at the end.

Dorothy Parker
There's a hell of a distance between wise-cracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wise-cracking is simply calisthenics with words.

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

Dorothy Parker
The ladies men admire, I've heard, Would shudder at a wicked word. Their candle gives a single light, They'd rather stay at home at night. They do not keep awake 'till three, Nor read erotic poetry. They never sanction the impure, Nor recognize an overture. They shrink from powders and from paints... So far I've had no complaints.

Dorothy Parker
And it is that word 'hummy,' my darlings, that marks the first place in The House at Pooh Corner at which Tonstant Weader fwowed up.

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

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
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