Dorothy Parker

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.

My land is bare of chattering folk; / the clouds are low along the ridges, / and sweet's the air with curly smoke / from all my burning bridges.

Prince or commoner, tenor or bass, Painter or plumber or never-do-well, Do me a favor and shut your face - Poets alone should kiss and tell.

They say of me, and so they should, It's doubtful if I come to good. I see acquaintances and friends Accumulating dividends And making enviable names In science, art and parlor games. But I, despite expert advice, Keep doing things I think are nice, And though to good I never come Inseparable my nose and thumb.

It is that word 'hunny,' my darlings, that marks the first place in The House at Pooh Corner at which Tonstant Weader fwowed up.

I can’t write five words but that I change seven.

For this my mother wrapped me warm,_x000D_ _x000D_ And called me home against the storm,_x000D_ _x000D_ And coaxed my infant nights to quiet,_x000D_ _x000D_ And gave me roughage in my diet,_x000D_ _x000D_ And tucked me in my bed at eight,_x000D_ _x000D_ And clipped my hair, and marked my weight,_x000D_ _x000D_ And watched me as I sat and stood:_x000D_ _x000D_ That I might grow to womanhood_x000D_ _x000D_ To hear a whistle and drop my wits_x000D_ _x000D_ And break my heart to clattering bits.

If I should labor through daylight and dark, Consecrate, valorous, serious, true, Then on the world I may blazon my mark; And what if I don't, and what if I do?

In the pathway of the sun, In the footsteps of the breeze, Where the world and sky are one, He shall ride the silver seas, He shall cut the glittering wave. I shall sit at home, and rock; Rise, to heed a neighbor's knock; Brew my tea, and snip my thread; Bleach the linen for my bed. They will call him brave.

Oh, both my shoes are shiny new, And pristine is my hat My dress is 1922… My life is all like that.

I give her sadness and the gift of pain,_x000D_ _x000D_ a new moon madness and a love of rain.

This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

Benchley and I had an office in the old Life magazine that was so tiny, if it were an inch smaller it would have been adultery.

A hangover is the wrath of grapes.

There's a hell of a distance between wisecracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.

Authors and actors and artists and such - Never know nothing, and never know much.

Telegram to a friend who had just become a mother after a prolonged pregnancy: Good work, Mary. We all knew you had it in you.

His voice was as intimate as the rustle of sheets.

Love is like quicksilver in the hand. Leave the fingers open and it stays. Clutch it and it darts away.

The ladies men admire, I've heard, Would shudder at a wicked word. Their candle gives a single light, They'd rather stay at home at night. They do not keep awake 'till three, Nor read erotic poetry. They never sanction the impure, Nor recognize an overture. They shrink from powders and from paints... So far I've had no complaints.

Now, look, baby, 'Union' is spelled with 5 letters. It is not a four-letter word.