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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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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
Might
Minds
Repeat
Trying
Afraid
Temples
Smartly
Sleep
Repeats
Sleepiness
Mind
Lost
List
Busting
Things
Night
Slowly
Knack
People
Beautiful
Lists
Insomnia
Light
Damn
Quotations
Remember
Profound
Temple

More quotes by 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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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
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Now, look, baby, 'Union' is spelled with 5 letters. It is not a four-letter word.
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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I know this will come as a shock to you, Mr. Goldwyn, but in all history, which has held billions and billions of human beings, not a single one ever had a happy ending.
Dorothy Parker
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And where does she find them?
Dorothy Parker
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There was nothing separate about her days. Like drops on the window-pane, they ran together and trickled away.
Dorothy Parker
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There was a reason for the cost of those perfectly plain black dresses.
Dorothy Parker
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Hollywood is the one place on earth where you could die of encouragement.
Dorothy Parker
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The writer's way is rough and lonely, and who would choose it while there are vacancies in more gracious professions, such as, say, cleaning out ferryboats?
Dorothy Parker
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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
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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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I give her sadness and the gift of pain, a new moon madness and a love of rain.
Dorothy Parker
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A list of authors who have made themselves most beloved and therefore, most comfortable financially, shows that it is our national joy to mistake for the first-rate, the fecund rate.
Dorothy Parker
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I'm not a writer with a drinking problem, I'm a drinker with a writing problem.
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
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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.
Dorothy Parker
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I like to think of my shining tombstone. It gives me, as you might say, something to live for.
Dorothy Parker
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There is entirely too much charm around, and something must be done to stop it.
Dorothy Parker