Best 269 quotes of Dorothy Parker on MyQuotes

Her big heart did not, as is so sadly often the case, inhabit a big bosom.

Her mind lives tidily, apart from cold and noise and pain. And bolts the door against her heart, out wailing in the rain.

Heterosexuality is not normal, it's just common.

His voice was as intimate as the rustle of sheets.

Hold your pen and spare your voice.

Hollywood is one place in the world where you can die of encouragement.

Hollywood is the one place on earth where you could die of encouragement.

Hollywood money isn't money. It's congealed snow, melts in your hand, and there you are.

Honesty means nothing until you are tested under circumstances where you are sure you could get away with dishonesty.

[Hospitalized and pressing the nurse's button before dictating letters to her secretary:] This should assure us of at least forty-five minutes of undisturbed privacy.

How do people go to sleep? I'm afraid I've lost the knack. I might try busting myself smartly over the temple with the night-light. I might repeat to myself, slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound; if I can remember any of the damn things.

I can't talk about Hollywood. It was a horror to me when I was there and it's a horror to look back on. I can't imagine how I did it. When I got away from it I couldn't even refer to the place by name. ''Out there,'' I called it.

I can’t write five words but that I change seven.

I don't know much about being a millionaire, but I'll bet I'd be darling at it.

I don't mind anything that's written about me, as long as it's not true.

I don't want to be classed as a humorist. It makes me feel guilty. I've never read a good tough quotable female humorist, and I never was one myself. I couldn't do it. A "smartcracker" they called me, and that makes me sick and unhappy. There's a hell of a distance between wisecracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.

I don't want to review books any more. It cuts in too much on my reading.

If all the young ladies who attended the Yale promenade dance were laid end to end, no one would be the least surprised.

If I didn't care for fun and such, I'd probably amount to much. But I shall stay the way I am, Because I do not give a damn.

If I don't drive around the park, I'm pretty sure to make my mark. If I'm in bed each night by ten, I may get back my looks again. If I abstain from fun and such, I'll probably amount to much; But I shall stay the way I am, Because I do not give a damn.

If I had any decency, I'd be dead. Most of my friends are.

If I had a shiny gun I could have a world of fun Speeding bullets through the brains Of the folks that cause me pains :)

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.

If I should labor through daylight and dark, Consecrate, valorous, serious, true, Then on the world I may blazon my mark; And what if I don't, and what if I do?

If you don't have anything nice to say, come sit by me.

... if this world were anything near what it should be there would be no more need of a Book Week than there would be a of a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.

If wild my breast and sore my pride, I bask in dreams of suicide, If cool my heart and high my head I think 'How lucky are the dead.

If, with the literate, I am Impelled to try an epigram, I never seek to take the credit; We all assume that Oscar said it.

If you looked for things to make you feel hurt and wretched and unnecessary, you were certain to find them.

If you're going to write, don't pretend to write down. It's going to be the best you can do, and it's the fact that it's the best you can do that kills you.

I give her sadness and the gift of pain, a new moon madness and a love of rain.

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." [From a column dated November 17, 1928]

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.

I know that there are things that never have been funny, and never will be. And I know that ridicule may be a shield, but it is not a weapon.

I like to have a martini/Two at the very most.

I like to think of my shining tombstone. It gives me, as you might say, something to live for.

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?

I might repeat to myself . . . a list of quotations from minds profound - if I can remember any of the damn things.

I misremember who first was cruel enough to nurture the cocktail party into life. But perhaps it would be not too much to say, in fact it would be not enough to say, that it was not worth the trouble.

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.

I'm not a writer with a drinking problem, I'm a drinker with a writing problem.

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.

I never see that prettiest thing- A cherry bough gone white with Spring- But what I think, "How gay 'twould be To hang me from a flowering tree.

Innocence is a desirable thing, a dainty thing, an appealing thing, in its place; but carried too far, it is merely ridiculous.

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.

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?

I regret to say that during the first act of this, I fell so soundly asleep that the gentleman who brought me piled up a barricade of overcoat, hat, stick, and gloves between us to establish a separation in the eyes of the world, and went into an impersonation of A Young Man Who Has Come to the Theater Unaccompanied.

I shudder at the thought of men.... I'm due to fall in love again

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.

It is that word 'hunny,' my darlings, that marks the first place in The House at Pooh Corner at which Tonstant Weader fwowed up.