Dorothy Parker was an American poet, writer, critic, and satirist based in New York; she was best known for her wit, wisecracks, and eye for 20th-century urban foibles.
From a conflicted and unhappy childhood, Parker rose to acclaim, both for her literary works published in such magazines as The New Yorker and as a founding member of the Algonquin Round Table. Following the breakup of the circle, Parker traveled to Hollywood to pursue screenwriting. Her successes there, including two Academy Award nominations, were curtailed when her involvement in left-wing politics resulted in her being placed on the Hollywood blacklist.
Dismissive of her own talents, she deplored her reputation as a "wisecracker". Nevertheless, both her literary output and reputation for sharp wit have endured.
Wikipedia
“One more drink and I'd have been under the host.”
As quoted in Try and Stop Me by Bennett Cerf (1944)
Misattributed as quatrain beginning “I like to have a martini,” (see below).
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”
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
“How odd
Of God
To choose
The Jews”
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
“The ones I like … are "cheque" and "enclosed."”
On the most beautiful words in the English language, as quoted in The New York Herald Tribune (12 December 1932)
Dorothy Parker: Complete Broadway, 1918–1923 (2014) https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25758762M/Dorothy_Parker_Complete_Broadway_1918-1923, Chapter 4: 1921
Dorothy Parker: Complete Broadway, 1918–1923 (2014) https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25758762M/Dorothy_Parker_Complete_Broadway_1918-1923
