Quotes by Dorothy Parker

Little WordsWhen you are gone, there is nor bloom nor leaf,Nor singing sea at night, nor silver birds;And I can only stare, and shape my griefIn little words.I cannot conjure loveliness, to drownThe bitter woe that racks my cords apart.The weary pen that sets my sorrow downFeeds at my heart.There is no mercy in the shifting year,No beauty wraps me tenderly about.I turn to little words- so you, my dear,Can spell them out.

I hate writing, I love having written.

Theres 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.

You cant 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 dont 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.

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

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 wasnt 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.

They sicken of the calm who know the storm.

God, the bitter misery that reading works into this world! Everybody knows that - everbody who IS everybody. All the best minds have been off reading for years. Look at the swing La Rouchefoucauld took at it. He said that if nobody had ever learned to read, very few people would be in love. Good for you, La Rouchefoucauld; nice going, boy. I wish I’d never learned to read.

Why, that dog is practically a Phi Beta Kappa. She can sit up and beg, and she can give her paw -- I dont say she will but she can.

Money cannot buy health, but Id settle for a diamond-studdedwheelchair.

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

Ducking for apples -- change one letter and its the story of my life.

Creativity is a wild mind and a disciplined eye.