121 Quotes By Dorothy Parker For Cultivating Take No Prisoners Attitude

The Monte Carlo casino refused to admit me until I was properly dressed so I went and found my stockings, and then came back and lost my shirt.

Me

  

Women and elephants never forget.

Never

  

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

  

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.

  

[On the ringing of her doorbell or telephone:] What fresh hell is this?

  

Bewildered is the fox who lives to find that grapes beyond reach can be really sour.

  

I was always sweet, at first. Oh, it's so easy to be sweet to people before you love them.

  

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.

  

What ever beauty may be it has for its basis order and for its essence unity Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.

  

[On hearing that Clare Boothe Luce was invariably kind to her inferiors:] And where does she find them?

  

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

  

Writing well is the best revenge.

  

Vice is nice, but liquor is quicker.

  

Now, look, baby, 'Union' is spelled with 5 letters. It is not a four-letter word.

  

[On Katharine Hepburn's stage performance:] She ran the whole gamut of emotions, from A to B.

  

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.

Me

  

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

  

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

  

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

Life

  

The cleverest woman on earth is the biggest fool on earth with a man.

  

Now I know the things I know, and I do the things I do; and if you do not like me so, to hell, my love, with you!

Like , Me

  

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

  

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

  

Where unwilling dies the rose; buds the new another year.

  

They tire of quiet, that have known the storm

  

Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.

  

I know this will come as a shock to you, Mr. Goldwyn, but in all history, which has held billions and billions of human beings, not a single one ever had a happy ending.

  

People ought to be one of two things, young or dead.

  

Heterosexuality is not normal, it's just common.

  

[After she and Clare Boothe Luce met in a doorway and the latter said, 'Age before beauty':] Pearls before swine.

  

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

  

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

  

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

  

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

Me

  

His voice was as intimate as the rustle of sheets.

  

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

  

The writer's way is rough and lonely, and who would choose it while there are vacancies in more gracious professions, such as, say, cleaning out ferryboats?

  

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

  

Most good women are hidden treasures who are only safe because nobody looks for them.

  

If I didn't care for fun and such, I'd probably amount to much, but I shall stay the way I am, because I do not give a damn.

  

[On being shown an apartment by a real estate agent:] Oh, dear, that's much too big. All I need is room enough to lay a hat and a few friends.

  

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

  

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.

  

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

Like

  

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

Life , Like

  

Hollywood is the one place on earth where you could die of encouragement.

  

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.

  

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

  

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

Life , Never

  

Drink and dance and laugh and lie, Love, the reeling midnight through, For tomorrow we shall die! (But, alas, we never do.)

Never

  

All I have to be thankful for in this world is that I was sitting down when my garter busted.

  

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

Think

  

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.

Me

  

Quick!! Act as if nothing has happened!

  

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.

Me , Think

  

When you have to apologize, it is well, I suppose, to get the thing over quickly ...

  

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.

Life , Never

  

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

  

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

  

The definition of eternity is two people and a ham.

  

[Hospitalized and pressing the nurse's button before dictating letters to her secretary:] This should assure us of at least forty-five minutes of undisturbed privacy.

  

Newton's Fourth Law: Every action has an equal and opposite satisfaction.

  

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.

Never

  

It's not the tragedies that kill us; it's the messes.

Peace

  

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.

Time

  

I require only three things of a man. He must be handsome, ruthless and stupid.

Wedding

  

I hate almost all rich people, but I think I’d be darling at it.

Think

  

But I don't give up; I forget why not.

  

I'd like to have money. And I'd like to be a good writer. These two can come together, and I hope they will, but if that's too adorable, I'd rather have money.

Like , Together

  

You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think.

Think

  

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.

Like , Me

  

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

Me

  

Of Orson Welles: It's like meeting God without dying.

Like

  

It turns out that, at social gatherings, as a source of entertainment, conviviality, and good fun, I rank somewhere between a sprig of parsley and a single ice-skate.

  

Genius can write on the back of old envelopes but mere talent requires the finest stationery available.

  

Writing is the art of applying the ass to the seat.

  

Misfortune, and recited misfortune especially, can be prolonged to the point where it ceases to excite pity and arouses only irritation.

  

If all the young ladies who attended the Yale promenade dance were laid end to end, no one would be the least surprised.

  

Those who have mastered etiquette, who are entirely, impeccably right, would seem to arrive at a point of exquisite dullness.

  

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!

  

You do what you can, and you do it because you should. But all you can do is all you can do.

  

Honesty means nothing until you are tested under circumstances where you are sure you could get away with dishonesty.

  

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

  

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.

Life

  

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

Me

  

You can't teach an old dogma new tricks.

  

If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?

  

Q: What's the difference between an enzyme and a hormone? A: You can't hear an enzyme.

  

If you wear a short enough skirt, the party will come to you.

  

This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

  

I hate writing, I love having written.

  

A hangover is the wrath of grapes.

  

Every year, back comes Spring, with nasty little birds yapping their fool heads off and the ground all mucked up with plants.

  

I'm not a writer with a drinking problem, I'm a drinker with a writing problem.

  

Time may be a great healer, but it's a lousy beautician.

Time

  

Years are only garments, and you either wear them with style all your life, or else you go dowdy to the grave.

Life

  

If you want to know what God thinks about money, just look at the people He gives it to.

  

Creativity is a wild mind and a disciplined eye.

  

The only dependable law of life - everything is always worse than you thought it was going to be.

Life

  

Never throw mud: you can miss the target, but your hands will remain dirty.

Never