Dorothy Parker

“And if my heart be scarred and burned,”

“My love runs by like a day in June,”

“And she had It. It, hell; she had Those.”

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

“And it is that word 'hummy,' my darlings, that marks the first place in The House at Pooh Corner at which Tonstant Weader fwowed up.”

“That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment.”

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

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

“Drink and dance and laugh and lie,(But, alas, we never do.)”

“The ones I like … are "cheque" and "enclosed."”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“[On being told of Calvin Coolidge's death] How do they know? (Coolidge was well-known for being a man of very few words.)”

“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.”

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

“Too fucking busy, and vice versa.”

“It serves me right for putting all my eggs in one bastard.”

“You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think.”

“What fresh hell can this be?”

“That woman speaks eighteen languages, and can't say No in any of them.”

“And there was that wholesale libel on a Yale prom. If all the girls attending it were laid end to end, Mrs Parker said, she wouldn't be at all surprised.”

“Brevity is the soul of lingerie.”

“Katharine Hepburn delivered a striking performance that ran the gamut of emotions, from A to B.”

“Dotty had Is that.”

“Almost overnight, Dorothy Parker was transformed from a woman of letters into a gin-soaked quote machine, with a martini in one hand and a dagger in the other.”

“Sinbad is produced in accordance with the fine old Shubert precept that nothing succeeds like undress.”

“Anyone can do that—the stunt lies in not doing it.”

“I thought that was going to be a good song, too, and then they went and rhymed “time” and “Rhine,” and spoiled everything.”

“They exude an atmosphere of The New Republic—a sort of Crolier-than-thou air.”

“There is one thing about Fiddlers Three, though, that held my attention all through the evening: Try as I might I could only discern two fiddlers.”

“To quote the only line of Gertrude Stein’s which I have ever been able to understand, “It is wonderful how I am not interested.””

“You know how a play in dialect is. At the first act, you think, “How quaint!”; at the second act, you wish they would either stop using dialect or keep quiet; and at the third act, you wish you hadn’t come. And Tillie, may I mention in passing, has four acts.”

“If the English version is in what, in our youth, we used to speak of affectionately as dear old iambic pentameter, the actors mercifully abstain from reciting it that way; they speak their lines as good, hardy prose.”

“The musical comedies of the month are She’s a Good Fellow and The Lady in Red, both of which owe their book and lyrics to Anne Caldwell—evidently a native of New York, judged by the casualness with which she rhymes “teacher” and “reach a.””

“And you remember, Rabbi Wise has declared, in a heated moment, that our plays seem to be written for the hosiery buyers. If Dr. Wise had only witnessed our new summer reviews, he doubtless would have amended his statement to read “by the hosiery buyers.””

“This use of soldiers to make a play popular seems too much like taking an unfair advantage of the uniform—hitting below the Sam Browne belt, as it were.”

“The play holds the season’s record, thus far, with a run of four evening performances and one matinée. By an odd coincidence, it ran just five performances too many.”

“Writing a book for the Follies seems to be about as profitable an occupation as furnishing flannel petticoats for the showgirls.”

“The management’s method of procedure is evidently to hire some well-known man to write the book, and then, as soon as it is written, to give it away to some deserving family, and go out and engage an assortment of specialty acts.”

“Van and Schenck put their songs over so skillfully that it isn’t until their act is all done that you realize what extremely indifferent songs they are. Now, when John Steel is singing, on the other hand, you are never fooled for a moment.”

“Mr. Hodge plays with his accustomed ease, even carrying the thing so far as to repeat many of his lines with his eyes shut; and in a pretty spirit of reciprocity, many members of the audience sit through the play with their eyes shut.”

“Of course, there are many things to be said for the afternoon performance, chief among them being that it cuts in so generously on one’s work.”

“Naturally, you know how you would feel on setting out to see a performance of Aucassin and Nicolette done by a company of little ones; you would strive to hurl yourself beneath the wheels of a friendly truck, on your way to the theatre.”

“Bringing in a wounded soldier is getting to be rather like waving an American flag at the end of an act. One cannot harbor feelings of unmixed admiration for the playwright who will hide behind either of them.”

“So seeing that there is nothing further to say, I shall go right on talking about The Circle, thus proving that I am a born reviewer of plays.”

“Rockliffe Fellowes gives a likable performance of the secondary crook’s rôle, and there are some decidedly agreeable-looking doughnuts consumed in the first act. And that is about all one can say for Pot Luck.”

“If you arrive late, you won’t know what anything is about, and if you are there all the way from the beginning, you won’t care.”

“There is one thing that appreciably eases the strain for the plays that arrive at this time of year, and that is that practically nothing is expected of them.”

“The murdered man meets his death in an intriguing and novel manner, which the management asks its customers, as a personal favor, not to reveal to possible future audiences. It remains a secret, chummily shared by those that have seen the play and the four or five million who read it in its original form as a Saturday Evening Post story a year or so ago. p. 320”

“It is advertised as “a seagoin’ comedy,” and anytime they go leaving off the final g that way, you know what to expect.”

“Two things made The Dice of the Gods, another play about drugs, seem much better than it had any real right to seem. One was that Morphia had come first, and once you had seen Morphia, nothing seemd so very terrible to you.”

“Men”

“It serves me right for putting all my eggs in one bastard.”

“It costs me never a stab nor squirm / To tread by chance upon a worm. / Aha, my little dear, / I say, Your clan will pay me back one day.”