Dorothy Parker: Thing

“Two things made The Dice of the Gods, another play about drugs, seem much better than it had any real right to seem. One was that Morphia had come first, and once you had seen Morphia, nothing seemd so very terrible to you. p. 375”

“Now I know the things I know, and I do the things I do; and if you do not like me so, to hell, my love, with you!”

“The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue.”

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

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

“Four be the things I'd have been better without: love, curiosity, freckles and doubt.”

“I might repeat to myself, slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound; if I can remember any of the damn things.”

“Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.”

“Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
a medley of extemporanea,
And love is a thing that can never go wrong,
and I am Marie of Romania.”

“I never see that prettiest thing-
A cherry bough gone white with Spring-
But what I think, "How gay 'twould be
To hang me from a flowering tree.”

“For a few minutes, everything is so cute that the mind reels…. And then, believe it or not, things get worse. So I shot myself.”

“Of course, there are many things to be said for the afternoon performance, chief among them being that it cuts in so generously on one’s work. p. 201”

“There is one thing about Fiddlers Three, though, that held my attention all through the evening: Try as I might I could only discern two fiddlers. p. 42”

“There is one thing that appreciably eases the strain for the plays that arrive at this time of year, and that is that practically nothing is expected of them. p. 306”

“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”