Dorothy Parker Quotes

Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.

If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he

If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.

That woman speaks eighteen languages, and can't say 'No' in any of them.

By the time you swear you're his,
Shivering and sighing.
And he vows his passion is,
Infinite, undying.
Lady make note of this -
One of you is lying.

In youth, it was a way I had,
To do my best to please.
And change, with every passing lad
To suit his theories.

But 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.

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

Heterosexuality is not normal, it's just common.

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

Brevity is the soul of lingerie.

That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment.

I require three things in a man: he must be handsome, ruthless, and stupid.

Take me or leave me; or, as is the usual order of things, both.

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

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 :)

If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.

I hate writing, I love having written.

There's life for you. Spend the best years of your life studying penmanship and rhetoric and syntax and Beowulf and George Eliot, and then somebody steals your pencil.

Hold your pen and spare your voice.

I won't telephone him. I'll never telephone him again as long as I live. He'll rot in hell, before I'll call him up. You don't have to give me strength, God; I have it myself. If he wanted me, he could get me. He knows where I am. He knows I'm waiting here. He's so sure of me, so sure. I wonder why they hate you, as soon as they are sure of you.

Love is like quicksilver in the hand. Leave the fingers open and it stays. Clutch it and it darts away.

The sun's gone dim, and the moon's gone black. For I loved him, and he didn't love back.

Where's the man that could ease a heart like a satin gown?

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

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

[Interview, The Paris Review, Summer 1956]

I don't care what is written about me so long as it isn't true.

The best way to keep children at home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant, and let the air out of the tires.

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

Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.

Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.

If all the girls attending [the Yale prom] were laid end to end, I wouldn't be at all surprised.

I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.

She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B.

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.

Why is it no one sent me yet one perfect limousine, do you suppose? Ah no, it's always just my luck to get one perfect rose.

The two most beautiful words in the English language are 'cheque enclosed.

And if my heart be scarred and burned,
The safer, I, for all I learned.

It serves me right for putting all my eggs in one bastard.

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.

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.

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.

You can't teach an old dogma new tricks.

Prince or commoner, tenor or bass,
Painter or plumber or never-do-well,
Do me a favor and shut your face -
Poets alone should kiss and tell.

I don't know," she said. "We used to squabble a lot when we were going together and then engaged and everything, but I thought everything would be so different as soon as you were married. And now I feel so sort of strange and everything. I feel so sort of alone.

I like best to have one book in my hand, and a stack of others on the floor beside me, so as to know the supply of poppy and mandragora will not run out before the small hours.

Why, that dog is practically a Phi Beta Kappa. She can sit up and beg, and she can give her paw - I don't say she will but she can.

A hangover is the wrath of grapes.

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.

This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it.

Now to me, Edith looks like something that would eat her young.

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

She was pleased to have him come and never sorry to see him go.

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

Money cannot buy health, but I'd settle for a diamond-studded
wheelchair.

Some men break your heart in two,
Some men fawn and flatter,
Some men never look at you;
And that cleans up the matter.

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