It's not the tragedies that trick us. It's the messes. I can't stand messes.

#DorothyParker #Parker

The Small Hours

No more my little song comes back;
And now of nights I lay
My head on down, to watch the black
And wait the unfailing gray.
Oh, sad are winter nights, and slow;
And sad's a song that's dumb;
And sad it is to lie and know
Another dawn will come.

#DorothyParker #Parker

I require only three things of a man: he must be handsome, ruthless, and stupid.

#DorothyParker #Parker

Leaving her place one day at the Algonquin Round Table:
"Excuse me, I have to go to the bathroom."
(pause)
"I really have to telephone, but I'm too embarassed to say so."

#DorothyParker #Parker

Of Clare Booth Luce, said to be very kind to her inferiors:
"Wherever does she find them?"

#DorothyParker #Parker

Nickname for Alexander Woollcott's New York apartment:
"Wit's End."

#DorothyParker #Parker

To a woman wearing a cape trimmed with monkey fur:
"Really? I thought they were beards."

#DorothyParker #Parker

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.

#DorothyParker #Parker

Love is for unlucky folk,
Love is but a curse.
Once there was a heart I broke:
And that, I think, is worse.

#DorothyParker #Parker

Of the Volney Hotel in New York, where she had an apartment:
"The kind of hotel where businessmen install their mothers and then run."

#DorothyParker #Parker

The Flaw In Paganism

Drink and dance and laugh and lie
Love, the reeling midnight through,
For tomorrow we shall die!
(But, alas, we never do.)

#DorothyParker #Parker

After spending some time in the company of a handsome sun-burnt young film star in Hollywood:
"Ah yes. His is the hue of availability."

#DorothyParker #Parker

On being asked the title of her talk to the Congress of American Writers' poetry session in 1939:
"Sophisticated Verse and The Hell with it."

#DorothyParker #Parker

Promise me that my gravestone will carry only these words:
"If you can read this, you've come too close."

#DorothyParker #Parker

Rhyme Against Living

If wild my breast and sore my pride,
I bask in dreams of suicide;
If cool my heart and high my head,
I think, "How lucky are the dead!"

#DorothyParker #Parker

I hate Women. They get on my Nerves.

#DorothyParker #Parker

Unfortunate Coincidence

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.

#DorothyParker #Parker

To someone who congratulated her with the words "What are you complaining about? You're married to a charming, handsome man who adores you. What more do you want?" :
"Presents."

#DorothyParker #Parker

Promise me that my gravestone will carry only these words:
"If you can read this, you've come too close."

#DorothyParker #Parker

Under interrogation by the FBI in 1952:
Listen, I can't even get my dog to stay down. Do I look like someone who could overthrow the goverment?

#DorothyParker #Parker