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There's life for you. Spend the best years of your life studying penmanship and rhetoric and syntax and Beowulf and George Eliot, and then somebody steals your pencil.

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
George
Eliot
Spend
Syntax
Somebody
Steals
Study
Pencil
Best
Pencils
Years
Rhetoric
Life
Studying
Beowulf
Stealing
Penmanship

More quotes by Dorothy Parker

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I like to have a martini/Two at the very most/After three I'm under the table/After four I'm under my host.
Dorothy Parker
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[On an actor who'd broken her leg in London:] Oh, how terrible. She must have done it sliding down a barrister.
Dorothy Parker
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[At the reception following her remarriage to Alan Campbell:] People who haven't talked to each other in years are on speaking terms again today - including the bride and groom.
Dorothy Parker
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London is satisfied, Paris is resigned, but New York is always hopeful. Always it believes that something good is about to come off, and it must hurry to meet it.
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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I was always sweet, at first. Oh, it's so easy to be sweet to people before you love them.
Dorothy Parker
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[Completely bored by a country weekend, wiring to a friend:] For heaven's sake, rush me a loaf of bread, enclosing saw and file.
Dorothy Parker
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Her big heart did not, as is so sadly often the case, inhabit a big bosom.
Dorothy Parker
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I like to have a martini/Two at the very most.
Dorothy Parker
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I don't know much about being a millionaire, but I'll bet I'd be darling at it.
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.
Dorothy Parker
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It's easier to write about those you hate — just as it's easier to criticize a bad play or a bad book.
Dorothy Parker
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Money was made, not to command our will, But all our lawful pleasures to fulfill. Shame and woe to us, if we our wealth obey The horse doth with the horseman away.
Dorothy Parker
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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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How do people go to sleep? I'm afraid I've lost the knack. I might try busting myself smartly over the temple with the night-light. 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.
Dorothy Parker
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There must be courage there must be no awe. There must be criticism, for humor, to my mind, is encapsulated in criticism. There must be a disciplined eye and a wild mind...There must be a magnificent disregard of your reader, for if he cannot follow you, there is nothing you can do about it.
Dorothy Parker
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Gratitude - the meanest and most snivelling attribute in the world.
Dorothy Parker
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He is a writer for the ages, the ages of four to eight.
Dorothy Parker
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[On Katharine Hepburn's stage performance:] She ran the whole gamut of emotions, from A to B.
Dorothy Parker
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Daily dawns another day I must up, to make my way. Though I dress and drink and eat, Move my fingers and my feet, Learn a little, here and there, Weep and laugh and sweat and swear, Hear a song, or watch a stage, Leave some words upon a page, Claim a foe, or hail a friend- Bed awaits me at the end.
Dorothy Parker