Dorothy Parker Quotes - Page 7

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

Trapped like a trap in a trap

Once, when I was young and true. Someone left me sad - Broke my brittle heart in two; And that is very bad. Love is for unlucky folk, Love is but a curse. Once there was a heart I broke; And that, I think, is worse.

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

Excuse me, everybody, I have to go to the bathroom. I really have to telephone, but I'm too embarrassed to say so.

[On being told their loquacious, domineering host was 'outspoken':] By whom?

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.

Four be the things I'd have been better without: love, curiosity, freckles and doubt.

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

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.

Hold your pen and spare your voice.

Travel, trouble, music, art, a kiss, a frock, a rhyme -- I never said they feed my heart, but still they pass my time.

I can't talk about Hollywood. It was a horror to me when I was there and it's a horror to look back on. I can't imagine how I did it. When I got away from it I couldn't even refer to the place by name. ''Out there,'' I called it.

When your bank account is so overdrawn that it is positively photographic, steps must be taken.

[To woman bragging about having kept her husband for seven years:] Don't worry, if you keep him long enough, he'll come back in style.

Summer makes me drowsy. Autumn makes me sing. Winter's pretty lousy, but I hate Spring.

My love runs by like a day in June, And he makes no friends of sorrows. He'll tread his galloping rigadoon In the pathway of the morrows. He'll live his days where the sunbeams start, Nor could storm or wind uproot him. My own dear love, he is all my heart, -- And I wish somebody'd shoot him.

I fell into writing, I suppose, being one of those awful children who wrote verses. I went to a convent in New York-the Blessed Sacrament... I was fired from there, finally, for a lot of things, among them my insistence that the Immaculate Conception was spontaneous combustion.

She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B.

[Requesting her epitaph to read this way:] Excuse my dust.

[On Kay Strozzi in The Silent Witness:] Miss Strozzi ... had the temerity to wear as truly horrible a gown as ever I have seen on the American stage. ... Had she not luckily been strangled by a member of the cast while disporting this garment, I should have fought my way to the stage and done her in, myself.

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.

They say of me, and so they should, It's doubtful if I come to good. I see acquaintances and friends Accumulating dividends And making enviable names In science, art and parlor games. But I, despite expert advice, Keep doing things I think are nice, And though to good I never come Inseparable my nose and thumb.

[When asked what was the inspiration for most of her work:] Need of money, dear.

This living, this living, this living Was never a project of mine.