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I know that an author must be brave enough to chop away clinging tentacles of good taste for the sake of a great work. But this is no great work, you see.

Dorothy Parker

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Dorothy Parker
Age: 73 †
Born: 1893
Born: August 22
Died: 1967
Died: June 7
Columnist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Poet
Screenwriter
Songwriter
Writer
West End
Monmouth County
New Jersey
Dorothy Rothschild
Dot Rothschild
Dottie Rothschild
Away
Enough
Tentacles
Must
Chop
Great
Clinging
Work
Author
Good
Brave
Sake
Taste

More quotes by Dorothy Parker

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Upton Sinclair is his own King Charles' head. He cannot keep himself out of his writings, try though he may or, by this time, try though he doesn't.
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I can’t write five words but that I change seven.
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At birth the Devil touched my tongue.
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Don't look at me in that tone of voice.
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Like many a better one before me, I have gone down under the force of numbers, under the books and books and books that keep coming out and coming out and coming out, shoals of them, spates of them, flash floods of them, too blame many books, and no sign of an end.
Dorothy Parker
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Mrs. Ewing was a short woman who accepted the obligation borne by so many short women to make up in vivacity what they lack in number of inches from the ground.
Dorothy Parker
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If you looked for things to make you feel hurt and wretched and unnecessary, you were certain to find them.
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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.
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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!
Dorothy Parker
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[On being shown an apartment by a real estate agent:] Oh, dear, that's much too big. All I need is room enough to lay a hat and a few friends.
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What writes worse than a Theodore Dreiser? ... Two Theodore Dreisers.
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The ones I like are ‘cheque’ and ‘enclosed.’
Dorothy Parker
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One more drink and I'd have been under the host.
Dorothy Parker
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[On Kay Strozzi in The Silent Witness:] Miss Strozzi ... had the temerity to wear as truly horrible a gown as ever I have seen on the American stage. ... Had she not luckily been strangled by a member of the cast while disporting this garment, I should have fought my way to the stage and done her in, myself.
Dorothy Parker
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Drink and dance and laugh and lie, Love, the reeling midnight through, For tomorrow we shall die! (But, alas, we never do.)
Dorothy Parker
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The affair between Margot Asquith and Margot Asquith will live as one of the prettiest love stories in all literature.
Dorothy Parker
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Every year, back comes Spring, with nasty little birds yapping their fool heads off and the ground all mucked up with plants.
Dorothy Parker
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This play John Drinkwater's Abraham Lincoln holds the season's record, thus far, with a run of four evening performances and one matinee. By an odd coincidence, it ran just five performances too many.
Dorothy Parker
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...as for helping me in the outside world, the Convent taught me only that if you spit on a pencil eraser, it will erase ink.
Dorothy Parker
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It costs me never a stab nor squirm / To tread by chance upon a worm. / Aha, my little dear, / I say, Your clan will pay me back one day.
Dorothy Parker