Dorothy Parker: Trending quotes (page 9)

“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. p. 151”

Dorothy Parker

Dorothy Parker: Complete Broadway, 1918–1923 (2014) https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25758762M/Dorothy_Parker_Complete_Broadway_1918-1923, Chapter 3: 1920

Books , Family

“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. p. 175”

Dorothy Parker

Dorothy Parker: Complete Broadway, 1918–1923 (2014) https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25758762M/Dorothy_Parker_Complete_Broadway_1918-1923, Chapter 3: 1920

“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. p. 93”

Dorothy Parker

Dorothy Parker: Complete Broadway, 1918–1923 (2014) https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25758762M/Dorothy_Parker_Complete_Broadway_1918-1923, Chapter 2: 1919

“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.”

Dorothy Parker

Interview, The Paris Review (Summer 1956)

Thinking , Change

“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.””

Dorothy Parker

Source: Dorothy Parker: Complete Broadway, 1918–1923 (2014) https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25758762M/Dorothy_Parker_Complete_Broadway_1918-1923, Chapter 2: 1919, p. 64

Quotes , Understanding

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

Dorothy Parker

As quoted in Try and Stop Me by Bennett Cerf (1944)
Misattributed as quatrain beginning “I like to have a martini,” (see below).

Drink

“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. p. 256”

Dorothy Parker

Dorothy Parker: Complete Broadway, 1918–1923 (2014) https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25758762M/Dorothy_Parker_Complete_Broadway_1918-1923, Chapter 5: 1922

“72 suburbs in search of a city”

Dorothy Parker

This description of Los Angeles, often attributed to Parker, seems to instead be based on Aldous Huxley having referred to L.A. http://www.laobserved.com/intell/2013/08/misquoting_dorothy_parker.php as "nineteen suburbs in search of a metropolis" in his 1925 book Americana. In turn, he was likely quoting someone else.
Misattributed

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“How odd
Of God
To choose
The Jews”

Dorothy Parker

This is actually by William Norman Ewer (1885-1976) in Week-End Book (1924); This has sometimes been misattributed to Parker, who was herself of Jewish heritage, in the form:
How odd of God
To choose the Jews
Similar sayings have also been attributed to Ogden Nash (1902-1971)
'It wasn't odd;
the Jews chose God
Cecil Brown
But not so odd
As those who choose
A Jewish God,
But spurn the Jews
Leo Rosten
Not odd
Of God
The goyim
Annoy 'im.
Misattributed

God

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

Dorothy Parker

On the most beautiful words in the English language, as quoted in The New York Herald Tribune (12 December 1932)

“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. p. 250”

Dorothy Parker

Dorothy Parker: Complete Broadway, 1918–1923 (2014) https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25758762M/Dorothy_Parker_Complete_Broadway_1918-1923, Chapter 4: 1921

Feeling

“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. p. xiii”

Dorothy Parker

Dorothy Parker: Complete Broadway, 1918–1923 (2014) https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25758762M/Dorothy_Parker_Complete_Broadway_1918-1923

Quotes