Top 250 Dorothy Parker Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “Those who have mastered etiquette, who are entirely, impeccably right, would seem to arrive at a point of exquisite dullness.”

— Dorothy Parker

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

— Dorothy Parker

103. “If, with the literate, I am Impelled to try an epigram, I never seek to take the credit; We all assume that Oscar said it.”

— Dorothy Parker

104. “At birth the Devil touched my tongue.”

— Dorothy Parker

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

— Dorothy Parker

106. “If you’re going to write, don’t pretend to write down. It’s going to be the best you can do, and it’s the fact that it’s the best you can do that kills you.”

— Dorothy Parker

107. “I wish, I wish I were a poisonous bacterium.”

— Dorothy Parker

108. “She can sit up and beg, and she can give her paw – I don’t say she will, but she can.”

— Dorothy Parker

109. “Somewhere, there, is an analogy, in a small way, if you have the patience for it. But I guess it isn’t a very good anecdote. I’m better at animal stories.”

— Dorothy Parker

110. “Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song.”

— Dorothy Parker

111. “Daily dawns another day; I must up, to make my way. Though I dress and drink and eat, Move my fingers and my feet, Learn a little, here and there, Weep and laugh and sweat and swear, Hear a song, or watch a stage, Leave some words upon a page, Claim a foe, or hail a friend- Bed awaits me at the end.”

— Dorothy Parker

112. “I like to think of my shining tombstone. It gives me, as you might say, something to live for.”

— Dorothy Parker

113. “I know that ridicule may be a shield, but it is not a weapon.”

— Dorothy Parker

114. “This must be a gift book. That is to say a book, which you wouldn’t take on any other terms.”

— Dorothy Parker

115. “Summer makes me drowsy. Autumn makes me sing. Winter’s pretty lousy, but I hate Spring.”

— Dorothy Parker

116. “Scratch a lover, and find a foe.”

— Dorothy Parker

117. “I wish he were dead. That’s a terrible wish. That’s a lovely wish. If he were dead, he would be mine. If he were dead, I would never think of now and the last few weeks. I would remember only the lovely times. It would be all beautiful. I wish he were dead. I wish he were dead, dead, dead.”

— Dorothy Parker

118. “Somebody was using the pencil.”

— Dorothy Parker

119. “For herself, she declared that she paid no attention to her birthdays – didn’t give a hoot about them; and it is true that when you have amassed several dozen of the same sort of thing, it loses that rarity which is the excitement of collectors.”

— Dorothy Parker

120. “I can’t write five words but that I change seven.”

— Dorothy Parker

121. “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.”

— Dorothy Parker

122. “Money cannot buy health, but I’d settle for a diamond-studded wheelchair.”

— Dorothy Parker

123. “Now, look, baby, ‘Union’ is spelled with 5 letters. It is not a four-letter word.”

— Dorothy Parker

124. “Vice is nice, but liquor is quicker.”

— Dorothy Parker

125. “The two most beautiful words in the English language are ’cheque enclosed.”

— Dorothy Parker

126. “The only dependable law of life – everything is always worse than you thought it was going to be.”

— Dorothy Parker

127. “Guido Natso is natso guido.”

— Dorothy Parker

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

— Dorothy Parker

129. “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.”

— Dorothy Parker

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

— Dorothy Parker

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

— Dorothy Parker

132. “Four be the things I’d have been better without: love, curiosity, freckles and doubt.”

— Dorothy Parker

133. “Nevil Shute’s On the Beach is no Christmas carol, but it seems to me a remarkably fine novel, one which I read, in the peculiarly repulsive phrase, with my eyes glued to the page.”

— Dorothy Parker

134. “Four things I am wiser to know: Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.”

— Dorothy Parker

135. “Hollywood is one place in the world where you can die of encouragement.”

— Dorothy Parker

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

— Dorothy Parker

137. “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.”

— Dorothy Parker

138. “Where unwilling dies the rose; buds the new another year.”

— Dorothy Parker

139. “It takes me six months to do a story. I think it out and write it sentence by sentence – no first draft. I can’t write five words but that I can change seven.”

— Dorothy Parker

140. “Sometimes I think I’ll give up trying, and just go completely Russian and sit on a stove and moan all day.”

— Dorothy Parker

141. “Sorrow is tranquility remembered in emotion.”

— Dorothy Parker

142. “Friends come and go but I wouldn’t have thought you’d be one of them.”

— Dorothy Parker

143. “Hold your pen and spare your voice.”

— Dorothy Parker

144. “I misremember who first was cruel enough to nurture the cocktail party into life. But perhaps it would be not too much to say, in fact it would be not enough to say, that it was not worth the trouble.”

— Dorothy Parker

145. “Go to the Martin Beck Theatre and watch Katherine Hepburn run the gamut of emotions from A to B.”

— Dorothy Parker

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

— Dorothy Parker

147. “A little bad taste is like a nice dash of paprika.”

— Dorothy Parker

148. “Every fashion, the fashion before: in a duller dress.”

— Dorothy Parker

149. “His voice was as intimate as the rustle of sheets.”

— Dorothy Parker

150. “You can’t teach an old dogma new tricks.”

— Dorothy Parker