Quotes from Dorothy Parker

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

You can't take it with you, and even if you did, it would probably melt.

Coda There's little in taking or giving, There's little in water or wine; This living, this living, this living Was never a project of mine. Oh, hard is the struggle, and sparse is The gain of the one at the top, For art is a form of catharsis, And love is a permanent flop, And work is the province of cattle, And rest's for a clam in a shell, So I'm thinking of throwing the battle- Would you kindly direct me to hell?

When you're awake, all the men go and fall for you - Sleep, pretty lady, and give me a chance (From the poem Lullaby)

Emily Post's Etiquette is out again, this time in a new and an enlarged edition, and so the question of what to do with my evenings has been all fixed up for me.

Should they whisper false of you, never trouble to deny. Should the words they say be true, weep and storm and swear they lie!

I don't 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.

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.

The Swiss are a neat and an industrious people, none of whom is under seventy-five years of age.

Oh, it's so easy to be sweet to people before you love them.

And let her loves, when she is dead Write this above her bones, No more she lives to give us bread Who asked her only stones.

By the time you swear you're his, shivering and sighing, And he vows his passion is infinite,undying-Lady,make a note of this: One of you is lying

Every love's the love before In a duller dress.

All right, God, send me to hell. You think You're frightening me with Your hell, don't You? You think Your hell is worse than mine.

The lads I've met in cupid's deadlock Were - shall we say? - born out of wedlock

Je ne peux être juste pour les livres qui traitent de la femme en tant que femme... Mon idée c'est que tous, aussi bien hommes que femmes, qui que nous sayons, nous devons être considérés comme d'êtres humaines.

You were perfectly fine.

For years I have been crouching in corners hissing small and ladylike anathema of Theodore Dreiser.

He and I had an office so tiny, that an inch smaller and it would have been adultery.

Yes, I once was the toast of two continents! (...Greenland & Australia).

I am at just that interesting age where i cannot keep out of things. I, too, must be in the know; I, too, must quote and sigh and nod wisely.

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.

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.

I wish I could drink like a lady I can take one or two at the most Three and I'm under the table Four and I'm under the host.