Asked if she knew Hemmingway's age:
"All writers are either 29 or Thomas Hardy."

#DorothyParker #Parker

Colliding with Clare Booth Luce in a doorway:
CBL: "Age before beauty."
DP (stepping aside): "Pearls before swine."

#DorothyParker #Parker

Challenged to use the word "horticulture" in a sentence:
"You can lead a whore to culture, but you can't make her think."

#DorothyParker #Parker

"Whatever is, is good" - your gracious creed.
You wear your joy of living like a crown.
Love lights your simplest gift of all - a friend.
Your shining loyalty unflecked by doubt
You ask but leave to follow to the end
(Couldn't you wait until I took you out?)

#DorothyParker #Parker

Her own epitaph:
"Excuse My Dust"

#DorothyParker #Parker

Time doth flit,
Oh shit!

#DorothyParker #Parker

Thought For a Sunshiny Morning

It costs me never a stab or squirm
To tread by chance upon a worm.
"Aha, my little dear," I say,
"Your clan will pay me back one day."

#DorothyParker #Parker

As I was saying to the landlord only this morning, "You can't have everything."

#DorothyParker #Parker

Resume

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.

#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

Hemmingway avoids New York, for he has the most valuable asset an artist can possess - the fear of what he knows is bad for him.

#DorothyParker #Parker

To Sam Goldwyn, who asked her at dinner: "Do you really say all those things which the papers report that you say?"
"Do you?"

#DorothyParker #Parker

To a friend who was upset that he had to get rid of his cat:
"Have you tried curiosity?"

#DorothyParker #Parker

Braggart

You will be frail and musty
With peering, furtive head,
While I am young and lusty
Among the roaring dead.

#DorothyParker #Parker

Of her supersophisticated New York days:
We were gallant, hardriding and careless of life. We were little black eyes that had gone astray... A sort of Ladies' Auxiliary of the Legion of the Damned.

#DorothyParker #Parker

John Huston is doing something called, very simply, The Bible. Now you must admit that's a big job. I think he's going to stop with Moses because he can't stand another moment - he is playing Moses, you see.

#DorothyParker #Parker

There were two things that would always bewilder her, she said: how a zipper worked and the exact function of Bernard Baruch.

#DorothyParker #Parker

...Why is it no one ever sent me yet
One perfect limousine, do you suppose?
Ah no, it's just my luck to get
One perfect rose.

#DorothyParker #Parker

As I was saying to the landlord only this morning, "You can't have everything."

#DorothyParker #Parker

Oscar Wilde

If, with the literate, I am
Impelled to try an epigram,
I never seek to take the credit;
We all assume that Oscar said it.

#DorothyParker #Parker