Dorothy Parker Quotes

“Heterosexuality is not normal, it's just common.”
― Dorothy Parker

“Men
They hail you as their morning star
Because you are the way you are.
If you return the sentiment,
They'll try to make you different;
And once they have you, safe and sound,
They want to change you all around.
Your moods and ways they put a curse on;
They'd make of you another person.
They cannot let you go your gait;
They influence and educate.
They'd alter all that they admired.
They make me sick, they make me tired.”
― Dorothy Parker, The Portable Dorothy Parker

“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.”
― Dorothy Parker, The Portable Dorothy Parker

“A Very Short Song

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.”
― Dorothy Parker, The Complete Poems of Dorothy Parker

“She realizes she doesn't know as much as God but feels she knows as much as God knew when he was her age.”
― Dorothy Parker

“Dorothy Parker once said: I require three things in a man. He must be handsome, ruthless, and stupid.” Upon delivering this Dot bon mot, with much waving of sparkly rings and jingly bracelets, Constance Langtry comments that she’d add a fourth: “Deft tongue. And I don’t mean a good talker.”
― Marie Wilson

“I found that Dottie's middle age, old age, made rock of much that had been fluid, and eccentricities once charming became too strange for safety or comfort.”
― Lillian Hellman, An Unfinished Woman: A Memoir

“Sunlight dusts them; Water is damp; Crosses pain them; And beheadings cause cramps—”
― Thomm Quackenbush, Danse Macabre

“While she was willing to give him a chance to repair her, she remained secretly unconvinced that she was worth the trouble. When the nurses said she was lucky to be alive, she thought the opposite was true. She felt unlucky to have failed.”
― Marion Meade, Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This?

“Scandalous stories of extramarital affairs and abortions persisted in circulating, but that was largely because she made no attempt to deny the rumors, since they were true.”
― Marion Meade, Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This?

“Oh good, the Algonquin Twit isn’t here.”
― Pamela L Hamilton, Lady Be Good Lib/E: The Life and Times of Dorothy Hale

“Oh good, the Algonquin Twit isn’t here.”
― Pamela Hamilton, Lady Be Good: The Life and Times of Dorothy Hale