Dorothy Parker > Quotes

“You were perfectly fine.”
― Dorothy Parker

“Je ne peux être juste pour les livres qui traitent de la femme en tant que femme... Mon idée c'est que tous, aussi bien hommes que femmes, qui que nous sayons, nous devons être considérés comme d'êtres humaines.”
― Dorothy Parker

“My land is bare of chattering folk; the clouds are low along the ridges, and sweet's the air with curly smoke from all my burning bridges.”
― Dorothy Parker

“He and I had an office so tiny, that an inch smaller and it would have been adultery.”
― Dorothy Parker

“I am at just that interesting age where i cannot keep out of things. I, too, must be in the know; I, too, must quote and sigh and nod wisely.”
― Dorothy Parker, The Collected Dorothy Parker

“Yes, I once was the toast of two continents! (...Greenland & Australia).”
― 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

“I wish I could drink like a lady
I can take one or two at the most
Three and I'm under the table
Four and I'm under the host.”
― Dorothy Parker

“He’s always with me, he and all his beauty and his cruelty.”
― Dorothy Parker, Complete Stories

“Frustration

If I had a shiny gun,
I could have a world of fun
Speeding bullets through the brains
Of the folk who give me pains;

Or had I some poison gas,
I could make the moments pass
Bumping off a number of
People whom I do not love.

But I have no lethal weapon-
Thus does Fate our pleasure step on!
So they still are quick and well
Who should be, by rights, in hell.”
― Dorothy Parker

“MIDNIGHT

The stars are soft as flowers, and as near;
The hills are webs of shadow, slowly spun;
No separate leaf or single blade is here-
All blend to one.

No moonbeam cuts the air; a sapphire light
Rolls lazily, and slips again to rest.
There is no edgèd thing in all this night,
Save in my breast.”
― Dorothy Parker, The Complete Poems of Dorothy Parker

“When I was young and bold and strong,
Oh, right was right, and wrong was wrong!”
― Dorothy Parker, Enough Rope

“She is happy, for she knows
That her dust is very pretty”
― Dorothy Parker, The Portable Dorothy Parker

“Humor to me, Heaven help me, takes in many things. There must be courage; there must be no awe. There must be criticism, for humor, to my mind, is encapsulated in criticism. There must be a disciplined eye and a wild mind. There must be a magnificent disregard of your reader, for if he cannot follow you, there is nothing you can do about it.”
― Dorothy Parker

“I like it better in the dusk, like this. It’s sweet. Dusk is so personal, somehow.”
― Dorothy Parker

“What is life, anyway? A death sentence. The longest distance between two points.”
― Dorothy Parker, Complete Stories

“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.”
― Dorothy Parker, The Portable Dorothy Parker

“Oh, gallant was the first love, and glittering and fine;
The second love was water, in a clear white cup;
The third love was his, and the fourth was mine;
And after that, I always get them all mixed up.”
― Dorothy Parker, Enough Rope

“INTERIOR

Her mind lives in a quiet room,
A narrow room, and tall,
With pretty lamps to quench the gloom
And mottoes on the wall.

There all the things are waxen neat
And set in decorous lines;
And there are posies, round and sweet,
And little, straightened vines.

Her mind lives tidily, apart
From cold and noise and pain,
And bolts the door against her heart,
Out wailing in the rain.”
― Dorothy Parker, The Complete Poems of Dorothy Parker

“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

“Years are only garments, and you either wear them with style all your life, or else you go dowdy to the grave”
― Dorothy Parker

“Eternity is a ham and two people” (also given as “Eternity is two people and a ham") is an old quip from the days when a ham was huge—far more than two people could finish. Irma Rombauer mentions this line in her famous cookbook, The Joy of Cooking.”
― Dorothy Parker or Irma Rombauer

“LINSCOTT: Well, I don't like it. Man works damn hard, leaves his wife all his money, and some pretty boy comes along and gets it. Sometimes I think those old East Indians had the right idea about widows. Cremate the husbands and burn up the wives along with them.
CONNIE: Maybe it would be simpler to burn up the money.”
― Dorothy Parker, The Ladies of the Corridor

“There was a rose that faded young;
I saw its shattered beauty hung
Upon a broken stem.
I heard them say, "What need to care
With roses budding everywhere?"
I did not answer them.”
― Dorothy Parker

“Amo i Martini, ma due al massimo. Tre, e sono sotto al tavolo. Quattro, e sono sotto il cameriere.”
― Dorothy Parker

“Four be the things I am wiser to know:
Idleness, sorrow, a friend, or a foe.
Four be the things I'd been better without:
Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.

Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient Champagne.
Three be the things I shall have till I die:
Laughter and hope, and a sock in the eye.”
― Dorothy Parker

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

“SONG OF ONE OF THE GIRLS

Here in my heart I am Helen;
I’m Aspasia and Hero, at least.
I’m Judith, and Jael, and Madame de Staël;
I’m Salomé, moon of the East.

Here in my soul I am Sappho;
Lady Hamilton am I, as well.
In me Récamier vies with Kitty O’Shea,
With Dido, and Eve, and poor Nell.

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, Enough Rope

“I don’t ask You to make it easy for me—You can’t do that, for all that You could make a world.”
― Dorothy Parker, Complete Stories

“God's acre was her garden-spot, she said;
She sat there often, of the Summer days,
Little and slim and sweet, among the dead,
Her hair a fable in the leveled rays.”
― Dorothy Parker