Dorothy Parker Quotes

Too fucking busy, and vice versa.

There is no such hour on the present clock as 6:30, New York time. Yet, as only New Yorkers know, if you can get through the twilight, you'll live through the night.

[On being told of Calvin Coolidge's death] How do they know? (Coolidge was known as a man who said very few words.)

All those writers who write about their own childhood! Gentle God, if I wrote about mine you wouldn't sit in the same room with me.

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

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

It takes me six months to do a story. I think it out and then write it sentence by sentence—no first draft. I can't write five words but that I change seven.

One more drink and I'd have been under the host.

I'm never going to accomplish anything; that's perfectly clear to me. I'm never going to be famous. My name will never be writ large on the roster of Those Who Do Things. I don't do anything. Not one single thing. I used to bite my nails, but I don't even do that any more.

I might repeat to myself, slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound; if I can remember any of the damn things.

And I'll stay away from Verlaine too; he was always chasing Rimbauds.

The ones I like ... are "cheque" and "enclosed."

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

The House Beautiful is, for me, the play lousy.

A lady ... with all the poise of the Sphinx though but little of her mystery.