Dorothy Parker Quotes

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

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.

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

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

I wouldn't touch a superlative again with an umbrella.

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

Heterosexuality is not normal, it's just common.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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?

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

Yet, as only New Yorkers know, if you can get through the twilight, you'll live through the night.

Women and elephants never forget.

Scratch a lover, and find a foe.

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

Vice is nice, but liquor is quicker.

It was written without fear and without research.

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

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.

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

[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.

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

Why is it no one sent me yet one perfect limousine, do you suppose? Ah no, it's always just my luck to get one perfect rose.

His voice was as intimate as the rustle of sheets.

Age before beauty, and pearls before swine.

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

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!

The best way to avoid a hangover is to stay drunk.

They sicken of the calm who know the storm.

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

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

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?

Quick!! Act as if nothing has happened!

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

Three be the things I shall never attain: Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.

Los Angeles: Seventy-two suburbs in search of a city.

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

A girl's best friend is her mutter.

The definition of eternity is two people and a ham.

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.

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

Mrs. Ewing was a short woman who accepted the obligation borne by so many short women to make up in vivacity what they lack in number of inches from the ground.

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.