Hollywood money isn’t money. It’s congealed snow, melts in your hand, and there you are.
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Hollywood
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
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: Love, Deception/Lying
Summer makes me drowsy. Autumn makes me sing. Winter’s pretty lousy, but I hate Spring.
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Autumn
Art is a form of catharsis.
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Artists, Art, Arts
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song, A medley of extemporanea; And love is a thing than can never go wrong; And I am Marie of Roumania.
—Dorothy Parker
This book is not to be tossed lightly aside, but to be hurled with great force.
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Books, Reading
Lips that taste of tears, they say,
Are the best for kissing.
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Crying, Kiss
Razors pain you; rivers are damp; acids stain you; and drugs cause cramp. Guns aren’t lawful; nooses give; gas smells awful; you might as well live.
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Suicide
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: Friendship, Sorrow, Reflection, Wine, Idleness
Out in Hollywood, where the streets are paved with Goldwyn, the word
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Fame
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
You can lead a whore to culture but you can’t make her think.
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Leaders, Leadership
Work is the province of cattle.
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Work
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: Legacy, Writing, Autobiography
She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B.
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Acting, Actors
He [Robert Benchley] and I had an office so tiny that an inch smaller and it would have been adultery.
—Dorothy Parker
Gratitude—the meanest and most sniveling attribute in the world.
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Gratitude
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
I don’t know much about being a millionaire, but I’ll bet I’d be darling at it.
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Wealth
Well, there are always those who cannot distinguish between glitter and glamour …
—Dorothy Parker
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
I shall stay the way I am because I do not give a damn.
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Apathy
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
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
Sorrow is tranquility remembered in emotion.
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Sorrow, Sadness
This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Critics, Criticism
I don’t care what anybody says about me as long as it isn’t true.
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Gossip
I require only three things of a man. He must be handsome, ruthless, and stupid.
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Man, Men
The best way to keep children at home is to make home a pleasant atmosphere – and to let the air out of the tires.
—Dorothy Parker
Topics: Home, Children
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Cornelia Otis Skinner American Actress, Playwright
- James Russell Lowell American Poet, Critic
- Edwin Markham American Poet
- Stanley Kubrick American Film Director
- Saul Bellow Canadian-born American Novelist
- Joyce Carol Oates American Novelist
- Charlotte Perkins Gilman American Feminist, Writer
- Woody Allen American Film Actor, Director
- Kimberly Johnson American Poet
- Edna St. Vincent Millay American Poet
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