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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
The nowadays ruling that no word is unprintable has, I think, done nothing whatever for beautiful letters. ... Obscenity is too valuable a commodity to chuck around all over the place it should be taken out of the safe on special occasions only.
Dorothy Parker
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
Nevil Shute's On the Beach is no Christmas carol, but it seems to me a remarkably fine novel, one which I read, in the peculiarly repulsive phrase, with my eyes glued to the page.
Dorothy Parker
Flowers are heaven's masterpiece.
Dorothy Parker
[To the British actor who annoyed her by repeated references to his busy 'shedule':] I think you're full of skit.
Dorothy Parker
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
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
Innocence is a desirable thing, a dainty thing, an appealing thing, in its place but carried too far, it is merely ridiculous.
Dorothy Parker
[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.
Dorothy Parker
We were all imitative. We all wandered in after Miss Edna St. Vincent Millay. We were all being dashing and gallant, declaring we weren't virgins, whether we were or not.
Dorothy Parker
A girl's best friend is her mutter.
Dorothy Parker
Newton's Fourth Law: Every action has an equal and opposite satisfaction.
Dorothy Parker
He is a writer for the ages, the ages of four to eight.
Dorothy Parker
What ever beauty may be it has for its basis order and for its essence unity Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.
Dorothy Parker
Every year, back comes Spring, with nasty little birds yapping their fool heads off and the ground all mucked up with plants.
Dorothy Parker
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.
Dorothy Parker
Hell's afloat in lover's tears.
Dorothy Parker
The House Beautiful is the play lousy.
Dorothy Parker
[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
Scratch a king and find a fool!
Dorothy Parker