Quotes from Dorothy Parker

Let the past die, my child, and go gaily on from its unmarked grave.

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.

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 don't amount to the powder to blow me to hell. I've turned out to be nothing but a bit of flotsam.

The dinner itself might well have been planned by the same mind that had devised the décor: black bean soup, crab meat and slivers of crab shell done in cream, roasted crown of lamb with bone tips decently encased in little paper drawers, tiny hard potatoes, green peas ruined by chopped carrots, asparagus instead of salad, and the dessert called, perhaps a shade hysterically, Cherries Jubilee.

Honest, I won't ever do it again. I'll go straight, after this. I'll never go to bed again, if I can only sleep now.

I've seen the way he dances; it looks like something you do on Saint Walpurgis Night.

De Profundis Oh, is it, then, Utopian To hope that I may meet a man Who'll not relate, in accents suave, The tales of girls he used to have?

They are sad books, filled with sad and skinless people. There are some who do not like such books. The world, too, is crowded with the sorrowful and the sensitive. There are many who do not like such a world.

She felt a cozy solidarity with the big company of the voluntary dead.

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

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.

Well, well. Isn't it a small world? And a peach of a world, too. A true little corker.

Love is like quick-silver in the hand, Sylvie. Leave the fingers open and it stays in the palm; clutch it, and it darts away.

In youth, it was a way I had, To do my best to please. And change, with every passing lad To suit his theories. But now I know the things I know And do the things I do, And if you do not like me so, To hell, my love, with you." ? Dorothy Parker, The Complete Poems of Dorothy Parker

This isn't my head I've got on now. I think this is something that used to belong to Walt Whitman.

ANECDOTE So silent I when love was by He yawned, and turned away; But sorrow clings to my apron-strings, I have so much to say.

Dance, you jazz-mad puppets of fate, and

And couldn't it be I was young and mad If ever my heart on my sleeve I wore? There's many to claw at a heart unclad, And little the wonder it ripped and tore.

I hate writing, but I love having written.

Tommy and his little playmates don't regard being young as just one of those things that are likely to happen to anybody. They make a business of it. And

Four be the things I'd been better without: Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt. Three be the things I shall never attain: Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.

the number of imaginary sheep in this world remains a matter of guesswork, who is richer or poorer for it? No, sir; I'm not their scorekeeper. Let them count themselves, if they're so crazy mad after mathematics. Let them do their own dirty work. Coming around here, at this time of day, and asking me to count them!

Es una lástima que el brillo de los ojos de una persona solo sea el brillo de los ojos de una persona, y que uno no pueda descifrar con una sola mirada qué lo produce.

For this my mother wrapped me warm, And called me home against the storm, And coaxed my infant nights to quiet, And gave me roughage in my diet, And tucked me in my bed at eight, And clipped my hair, and marked my weight, And watched me as I sat and stood: That I might grow to womanhood To hear a whistle and drop my wits And break my heart to clattering bits.