Best 269 quotes of Dorothy Parker on MyQuotes

Accursed from their birth they be Who seek to find monogamy, Pursuing it from bed to bed— I think they would be better dead.

[After she and Clare Boothe Luce met in a doorway and the latter said, 'Age before beauty':] Pearls before swine.

Age before beauty, and pearls before swine.

A liberal is a man who leaves the room before the fight starts.

A list of authors who have made themselves most beloved and therefore, most comfortable financially, shows that it is our national joy to mistake for the first-rate, the fecund rate.

A little bad taste is like a nice dash of paprika.

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

All those writers who write about their own childhood! Gentle God, if I wrote about mine you wouldn't sit in the same room with me.

And I'll stay off Verlaine too; he was always chasing Rimbauds.

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

And where does she find them?

Anthologists are lazy fellows who like to spend a quiet evening at home raiding good books.

Art is a form of catharsis.

Art is a form of catharsis emotional release, purging, cleansing, purifying.

...as for helping me in the outside world, the Convent taught me only that if you spit on a pencil eraser, it will erase ink.

As I was saying to the landlord only this morning: 'You can't have everything'.

At birth the Devil touched my tongue.

[At the reception following her remarriage to Alan Campbell:] People who haven't talked to each other in years are on speaking terms again today - including the bride and groom.

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.

Benchley and I had an office in the old Life magazine that was so tiny, if it were an inch smaller it would have been adultery.

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

Be you wise and never sad, You will get your lovely lad. Never serious be, nor true, And your wish will come to you-- And if that makes you happy, kid, You'll be the first it ever did.

But I don't give up; I forget why not.

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.

[Completely bored by a country weekend, wiring to a friend:] For heaven's sake, rush me a loaf of bread, enclosing saw and file.

Constant use had not worn ragged the fabric of their friendship.

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.

Dear Mary: We all knew you had it in you.

Despite his persecutions, Mr. [Upton] Sinclair reveals himself in Money Writes! to be an enviable man. Always the thing he desires to believe is the thing he feels he knows to be true.

Don't feel bad when I die; I've been dead for a long time.

Don't look at me in that tone of voice.

Ducking for apples -- change one letter and it's the story of my life.

[Epitaph:] Involved in a plot.

Eternity is a ham and two people.

Every year, back comes Spring, with nasty little birds yapping their fool heads off and the ground all mucked up with plants.

Flowers are heaven's masterpiece.

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.

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.

Four be the things I am wiser to know: Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and 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.

Four be the things I'd have been better without: love, curiosity, freckles and doubt.

Four things I am wiser to know: Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.

[From a window in the Writer's Building at MGM, which overlooked a cemetery:] Hello down there. It might interest you to know that up here we are just as dead as you are.

Genius can write on the back of old envelopes but mere talent requires the finest stationery available.

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.

God, the bitter misery that reading works into this world! Everybody knows that - everbody who IS everybody. All the best minds have been off reading for years. Look at the swing La Rouchefoucauld took at it. He said that if nobody had ever learned to read, very few people would be in love. Good for you, La Rouchefoucauld; nice going, boy. I wish I’d never learned to read.

Go to the Martin Beck Theatre and watch Katherine Hepburn run the gamut of emotions from A to B.

Gratitude - the meanest and most snivelling attribute in the world.

Guns aren't lawful; nooses give; gas smells awful. So you might as well live.

He lies below, correct in cypress wood, And entertains the most exclusive worms.

Hell's afloat in lover's tears.