Top 316 Quotes & Sayings by Dorothy Parker - Page 3

Summer makes me drowsy. Autumn makes me sing. Winter's pretty lousy, but I hate Spring.

When your bank account is so overdrawn that it is positively photographic, steps must be taken.

Pictures pass me in long review,-- Marching columns of dead events. I was tender, and, often, true; Ever a prey to coincidence. Always knew I the consequence; Always saw what the end would be. We're as Nature has made us -- hence I loved them until they loved me.

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.

[On Kay Strozzi in The Silent Witness:] Miss Strozzi ... had the temerity to wear as truly horrible a gown as ever I have seen on the American stage. ... Had she not luckily been strangled by a member of the cast while disporting this garment, I should have fought my way to the stage and done her in, myself.

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

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song, a medley of extemporanea, And love is a thing that can never go wrong, and I am Marie of Romania.

Three highballs, and I think I'm St. Francis of Assisi.

The affair between Margot Asquith and Margot Asquith will live as one of the prettiest love stories in all literature.

Why, after all, should readers never be harrowed? Surely there is enough happiness in life without having to go to books for it.

On lady novelists: As artists they're rot, but as providers they're oil wells; they gush. Norris said she never wrote a story unless it was fun to do. I understand Ferber whistles at her typewriter.

[On an actor who'd broken her leg in London:] Oh, how terrible. She must have done it sliding down a barrister.

I fell into writing, I suppose, being one of those awful children who wrote verses. I went to a convent in New York-the Blessed Sacrament... I was fired from there, finally, for a lot of things, among them my insistence that the Immaculate Conception was spontaneous combustion.

[When asked what was the inspiration for most of her work:] Need of money, dear.

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.

[On being told party guests were ducking for apples:] There, but for a typographical error, is the story of my life.

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.

... 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.

Travel, trouble, music, art, a kiss, a frock, a rhyme -- I never said they feed my heart, but still they pass my time.

Brevity is the soul of lingerie.

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.

It may be that this autobiography [Aimee Semple McPherson's] is set down in sincerity, frankness, and simple effort. It may be, too, that the Statue of Liberty is situated in Lake Ontario.

Excuse me, everybody, I have to go to the bathroom. I really have to telephone, but I'm too embarrassed to say so.

There's little in taking or giving, There's little in water or wine: This living, this living, this living, Was never a project of mine. Oh, hard is the struggle, and sparse is The gain of the one at the top, For art is a form of catharsis, And love is a permanent flop, And work is the province of cattle, And rest's for a clam in a shell, So I'm thinking of throwing the battle - Would you kindly direct me to hell?

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.

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

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

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

Well, there are always those who cannot distinguish between glitter and glamour . . . the glamour of Isadora Duncan came from her great, torn, bewildered, foolhardy soul.

[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.

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.

People are more fun than anyone.

The nowadays ruling that no word is unprintable has, I think, done nothing whatever for beautiful letters. ... Obscenity is too valuable a commodity to chuck around all over the place; it should be taken out of the safe on special occasions only.

all men are the same age.

The sweeter the apple, the blacker the core. Scratch a lover and find a foe!

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

Said of her husband on the day their divorce became final: Oh, don't worry about Alan. . . . Alan will always land on somebody's feet.

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

The ones I like are ‘cheque’ and ‘enclosed.’

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

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.

At birth the Devil touched my tongue.

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.

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

This is me apologizing. I am a fool, a bird-brain, a liar and a horse-thief. I wouldn't touch a superlative again with an umbrella.

Said after she had been seriously ill: The doctors were very brave about it.

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.

This living, this living, this living Was never a project of mine.

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

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

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.

Hold your pen and spare your voice.

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

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.

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

They tire of quiet, that have known the storm

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

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

Salary is no object: I want only enough to keep body and soul apart.

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