Dorothy Parker > Quotes

“They say of me, and so they should,
It's doubtful if I come to good.
I see acquaintances and friends
Accumulating dividends
And making enviable names
In science, art and parlor games.
But I, despite expert advice,
Keep doing things I think are nice,
And though to good I never come
Inseparable my nose and thumb.”
― Dorothy Parker

“My love runs by like a day in June,
And he makes no friends of sorrows.
He'll tread his galloping rigadoon
In the pathway of the morrows.
He'll live his days where the sunbeams start,
Nor could storm or wind uproot him.
My own dear love, he is all my heart, --
And I wish somebody'd shoot him.”
― Dorothy Parker, The Portable Dorothy Parker

“There was a reason for the cost of those perfectly plain black dresses.”
― Dorothy Parker, The Portable Dorothy Parker

“The days will rally, wreathing
Their crazy tarantelle;
And you must go on breathing,
But I'll be safe in hell.

Like January weather,
The years will bite and smart,
And pull your bones together
To wrap your chattering heart.

The pretty stuff you're made of
Will crack and crease and dry.
The thing you are afraid of
Will look from every eye.

You will go faltering after
The bright, imperious line,
And split your throat on laughter,
And burn your eyes with brine.

You will be frail and musty
With peering, furtive head,
Whilst I am young and lusty
Among the roaring dead.”
― Dorothy Parker

“It costs me never a stab nor squirm / To tread by chance upon a worm. / Aha, my little dear, / I say, Your clan will pay me back one day.”
― Dorothy Parker

“Ah, clear they see and true they say
That one shall weep, and one shall stray”
― Dorothy Parker

“A Very Short Song

Once, when I was young and true,
Someone left me sad-
Broke my brittle heart in two;
And that is very bad.

Love is for unlucky folk,
Love is but a curse.
Once there was a heart I broke;
And that, I think, is worse.”
― Dorothy Parker, The Complete Poems of Dorothy Parker

“How do people go to sleep? I'm afraid I've lost the knack.”
― Dorothy Parker

“Friends come and go but I wouldn't have thought you'd be one of them”
― Dorothy Parker

“Then she told herself to stop her nonsense. If you looked for things to make you feel hurt and wretched and unnecessary, you were certain to find them, more easily each time, so easily, soon, that you did not even realize you had gone out searching. Women alone often developed into experts at the practice. She must never join their dismal league.”
― Dorothy Parker

“Now to me, Edith looks like something that would eat her young.”
― Dorothy Parker, The Collected Dorothy Parker

“She can sit up and beg, and
she can give her paw —
I don't say she will, but she can.”
― Dorothy Parker

“Hold your pen and spare your voice.”
― 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, The Portable Dorothy Parker

“They say of me, and so they should,
It's doubtful if I come to good.”
― 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, The Portable Dorothy Parker

“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

“I'm of the glamorous ladies
At whose beckoning history shook.
But you are a man, and see only my pan,
So I stay at home with a book.”
― Dorothy Parker, The Portable Dorothy Parker

“I'm quite all right. I'm not even scared. You see, I've learned from looking around, there is something worse than loneliness--and that's the fear of it.”
― Dorothy Parker, The Ladies of the Corridor

“I can’t write five words but that I change seven.”
― Dorothy Parker

“tomorrow's gone-we'll have tonight!”
― Dorothy Parker, The Poetry and Short Stories of Dorothy Parker

“For a few minutes, everything is so cute that the mind reels.... And then, believe it or not, things get worse. So I shot myself.”
― Dorothy Parker

“You don’t want a general houseworker, do you? Or a traveling companion, quiet, refined, speaks fluent French entirely in the present tense? Or an assistant billiard-maker? Or a private librarian? Or a lady car-washer? Because if you do, I should appreciate your giving me a trial at the job. Any minute now, I am going to become one of the Great Unemployed. I am about to leave literature flat on its face. I don’t want to review books any more. It cuts in too much on my reading.”
― Dorothy Parker

“Gertrude Stein did us the most harm when she said, 'You're all a lost generation.' That got around to certain people and we all said, 'Whee! We're lost.”
― Dorothy Parker

“Oh, both my shoes are shiny new,
And pristine is my hat
My dress is 1922…
My life is all like that.”
― Dorothy Parker

“Because your eyes are slant and slow,
Because your hair is sweet to touch,
My heart is high again; but oh,
I doubt if this will get me much.”
― Dorothy Parker, The Complete Poems of Dorothy Parker

“Penelope

In the pathway of the sun,
In the footsteps of the breeze,
Where the world and sky are one,
He shall ride the silver seas,
He shall cut the glittering wave.
I shall sit at home, and rock;
Rise, to heed a neighbor's knock;
Brew my tea, and snip my thread;
Bleach the linen for my bed.
They will call him brave.”
― Dorothy Parker

“I know that an author must be brave enough to chop away clinging tentacles of good taste for the sake of a great work. But this is no great work, you see.”
― Dorothy Parker

“The plot is so tired that even this reviewer, who in infancy was let drop by a nurse with the result that she has ever since been mystified by amateur coin tricks, was able to guess the identity of the murderer from the middle of the book.”
― Dorothy Parker

“I've never been a millionaire but I know I'd be just darling at it.”
― Dorothy Parker