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If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second-greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first-greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they're happy.

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
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Friendship
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Elements
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Shoot
First
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More quotes by 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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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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The sun's gone dim, and the moon's gone black. For I loved him, and he didn't love back.
Dorothy Parker
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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
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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
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If wild my breast and sore my pride, I bask in dreams of suicide, If cool my heart and high my head I think 'How lucky are the dead.
Dorothy Parker
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(Scottish Terriers) have all the compactness of a small dog and all the valor of a big one. And they are so exceedingly sturdy that it is proverbial that the only thing fatal to them is being run over by an automobile - in which case the car itself knows it has been in a fight.
Dorothy Parker
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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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[On Katharine Hepburn's stage performance:] She ran the whole gamut of emotions, from A to B.
Dorothy Parker
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Ah, clear they see and true they say That one shall weep, and one shall stray
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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Now to me, Edith looks like something that would eat her young.
Dorothy Parker
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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
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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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[Epitaph:] Involved in a plot.
Dorothy Parker
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I like best to have one book in my hand, and a stack of others on the floor beside me, so as to know the supply of poppy and mandragora will not run out before the small hours.
Dorothy Parker
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Of Orson Welles: It's like meeting God without dying.
Dorothy Parker
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Scratch a king and find a fool!
Dorothy Parker
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Hollywood is one place in the world where you can die of encouragement.
Dorothy Parker
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They sicken of the calm who know the storm.
Dorothy Parker