Dorothy Parker (1893–1967,) née Rothschild, was an American short-story writer, poet, screenwriter, and critic who was well-known for her witty remarks, biting prose, and verse satires. She wrote book reviews and short stories for The New Yorker magazine, becoming one of its renowned wits. Her style of spontaneous wit and acerbic criticism has had a lasting influence.
Born in West End, near Long Beach, New Jersey, to Scottish-Jewish parents, Parker never finished high school. She began work in 1916 as a theatre reviewer for Vanity Fair and turned into a book reviewer for The New Yorker in 1927. Her first book of poems, Enough Rope (1927,) became a best-seller; this allowed her to quit her job and work freelance. Parker remained a leading contributor to The New Yorker. She was one of the founders of the Algonquin Round Table, an informal literary group.
Enough Rope, together with Sunset Gun (1928) and Death and Taxes (1931,) was collected in Not So Deep as a Well (1936.) Parker’s short prose pieces printed in Laments for the Living (1930) and After Such Pleasures (1933) were accumulated in Here Lies (1939.)
Parker also collaborated on several film scripts, including A Star is Born (1937) and The Little Foxes (1941.) Her extraordinary talent for witty epigrams is evident throughout her work.
A lifelong advocate of left-wing causes, Parker worked as a newspaper correspondent in Spain during the civil war. She left her estate to the civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Dorothy Parker
Oh seek, my love, your newer way;
I’ll not be left in sorrow.
So long as I have yesterday
Go take your damned tomorrow!
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Procrastination
They laid their hands upon my head,
They stroked my cheek and brow;
And time could heal a hurt, they said,
And time could dim a vow.
And they were pitiful and mild
Who whispered to me then;
The heart that breaks in April, child;
Will mend in May again.
Oh, many a mended heart they knew;
So old they were, and wise.
And little did they have to do
To come to me with lies!
Who flings me silly talk of May
Shall meet a bitter soul;
For June was nearly spent away
Before my heart was whole.
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Heart
Well, there are always those who cannot distinguish between glitter and glamour …
—Dorothy Parker
Misfortune, and recited misfortune especially, may be prolonged to the point where it ceases to excite pity and arouses only irritation.
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Misfortune
Some men break your heart in two,
Some men fawn and flatter,
Some men never look at you;
And that cleans up the matter.
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Men
His voice was as intimate as the rustle of sheets.
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: People
Travel, trouble, music, art,
A kiss, a frock, a rhyme –
I never said they feed my heart,
But still they pass my time.
—Dorothy Parker
Work is the province of cattle.
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Work
By the time you swear you’re his,
Shivering and sighing,
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying –
Lady, make a note of this:
One of you is lying.
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Deception/Lying, Love
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.
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Hollywood
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.
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Authors & Writing, Writing, Writers
Brevity is the soul of lingerie.
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Fashion, Dress, Brevity, Wit
Drink, and dance and laugh and lie, love the reeling midnight through, for tomorrow we shall die! (But, alas, we never do.)
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Parties, Party
Love is like quicksilver in the hand. Leave the fingers open and it stays. Clutch is, and it darts away.
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Love
I don’t care what anybody says about me as long as it isn’t true.
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Gossip
This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Criticism, Critics
Summer makes me drowsy. Autumn makes me sing. Winter’s pretty lousy, but I hate Spring.
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Autumn
Oh, it is sure as it is sad
That any lad is every lad,
And what’s a girl, to dare implore
Her dear be hers forevermore?
Though he be tried and he be bold,
And swearing death should he be cold,
He’ll run the path the others went….
But you, my sweet, are different.
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Marriage
If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Wealth, Money
Once when I was young and true,
Someone left me sad-
Broke my brittle heart in two;
And that was 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.
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Love
I might repeat to myself, slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound; if I can remember any of the damned things.
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Quotations
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.
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Idleness, Reflection, Friendship, Sorrow, Wine
I never thought that heav’n would lose its blue
And sullen storm-clouds mask the gentle sky;
I never thought the rose’s velvet hue
Would pale and sicken, though we said good-by.
I never dreamed the lark would hush its note
As day succeeded ever-drearier day,
Nor knew the song that swelled the robin’s throat
Would fade to silence, when you went away.
I never knew the sun’s irradiant beams
Upon the brooding earth no more would shine,
Nor thought that only in my mocking dreams
Would happiness that once I knew be mine.
I never thought the slim moon, mournfully,
Would shroud her pallid self in murky night.
Dear heart, I never thought these things would be-
I never thought they would, and I was right.
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Loss
He [Robert Benchley] and I had an office so tiny that an inch smaller and it would have been adultery.
—Dorothy Parker
Money cannot buy health, but I’d settle for a diamond-studded wheelchair.
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Health
Telegram to a friend who had just become a mother after a prolonged pregnancy: Good work, Mary. We all knew you had it in you
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Pregnancy, Birth
All those writers who write about their childhood! Gentle God, if I wrote about mine you wouldn’t sit in the same room with me.
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Autobiography, Legacy, Writing
Gratitude—the meanest and most sniveling attribute in the world.
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Gratitude
You can lead a whore to culture but you can’t make her think.
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Leaders, Leadership
All I say is, nobody has any business to go around looking like a horse and behaving as if it were all right. You don’t catch horses going around looking like people, do you?
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: People
Lips that taste of tears, they say,
Are the best for kissing.
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Crying, Kiss
I require only three things of a man. He must be handsome, ruthless, and stupid.
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Man, Men
Why is it no one ever sent me yet one perfect limousine, do you suppose? Ah no, it’s always just my luck to get one perfect rose.
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Giving, Charity, Wealth
I never see the prettiest thing –
A cherry bough gone white with Spring –
But what I think, How gay ‘twould be
To hang me from a flowering tree.
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Death
It’s not the tragedies that kill us, it’s the messes.
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Problems, Tragedy
I like to have a martini,
Two at the very most.
After three I’m under the table,
After four I’m under my host!
—Dorothy Parker
Women and elephants never forget.
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Memories
Where’s the man could ease a heart, like a satin gown?
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Dress, Fashion
And if my heart be scarred and burned, the safer, I, for all I learned.
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Experience
She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B.
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Actors, Acting
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