Dorothy Parker: Trending quotes

Dorothy Parker trending quotes. Read the latest quotes in collection

Dorothy Parker: 344 quotes28 likes

“What fresh hell is this?”

"If the doorbell rang in her apartment, she would say, 'What fresh hell can this be?' — and it wasn't funny; she meant it." You might as well live: the life and times of Dorothy Parker, John Keats (Simon Schuster, 1970, p124). Often quoted as "What fresh hell is this?" as in the title of the 1987 biography by Marion Meade, "Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This?".
Variant: What fresh hell can this be?
Source: The Portable Dorothy Parker

“If I didn't care for fun and such,
I'd probably amount to much.
But I shall stay the way I am,
Because I do not give a damn.”

16 August 1925
Source: Enough Rope (1926)

“Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment.”

"But the One on the Right" in The New Yorker (1929)
Context: That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment.

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

Parker's answer when asked to use the word horticulture during a game of Can-You-Give-Me-A-Sentence?, as quoted in You Might as well Live by John Keats (1970).
Source: You Might as Well Live: The Life and Times of Dorothy Parker

“Brevity is the soul of lingerie.”

Caption written for Vogue 1916
Our Mrs Parker (1934)
Source: While Rome Burns

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

A similar line was later used by Ira Gershwin in "The Saga of Jenny" in Lady in the Dark (1942): "In 27 languages she couldn't say no."
Our Mrs Parker (1934)
Source: While Rome Burns

“I require three things in a man: he must be handsome, ruthless, and stupid.”

“And if my heart be scarred and burned,
The safer, I, for all I learned.”

Source: Sunset Gun: Poems

“She was pleased to have him come and never sorry to see him go.”

“Take me or leave me; or, as is the usual order of things, both.”

“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.”

Source: The Complete Poems of Dorothy Parker

“I'm never going to accomplish anything; that's perfectly clear to me.”

"The Little Hours" in Here Lies (1939)
Context: 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.

“Constant use had not worn ragged the fabric of their friendship.”

“If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.”

From a review of the revised edition of “The Elements of Style” by William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White published in Esquire, November 1959.

“If you wear a short enough skirt, the party will come to you.”

“The best way to keep children at home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant, and let the air out of the tires.”

“There's a hell of a distance between wise-cracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wise-cracking is simply calisthenics with words.”

Interview, The Paris Review (Summer 1956)

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

On her abortion, as quoted in You Might as well Live by John Keats (1970)
Source: You Might as Well Live: The Life and Times of Dorothy Parker

“A hangover is the wrath of grapes.”

“I don't care what is written about me so long as it isn't true.”