“In youth, it was a way I had,To do my best to please.And change, with every passing ladTo suit his theories.But now I know the things I knowAnd do the things I do,And if you do not like me so,To hell, my love, with you.”
Dorothy Parker“MenThey hail you as their morning starBecause you are the way you are.If you return the sentiment,They'll try to make you different;And once they have you, safe and sound,They want to change you all around.Your moods and ways they put a curse on;They'd make of you another person.They cannot let you go your gait;They influence and educate.They'd alter all that they admired.They make me sick, they make me tired.”
Dorothy Parker, The Portable Dorothy Parker“She realizes she doesn't know as much as God but feels she knows as much as God knew when he was her age.”
Dorothy Parker“You think You're frightening me with Your hell, don't You? You think Your hell is worse than mine.”
Dorothy Parker, The Portable Dorothy Parker“Then she told herself to stop her nonsense. If you looked for things to make you feel hurt and wretched and unnecessary, you were certain to find them, more easily each time, so easily, soon, that you did not even realize you had gone out searching.”
Dorothy Parker, The Portable Dorothy Parker“This level reach of blue is not my sea; Here are sweet waters, pretty in the sun,Whose quiet ripples meet obediently A marked and measured line, one after one. This is no sea of mine. that humbly laves Untroubled sands, spread glittering and warm. I have a need of wilder, crueler waves; They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm. So let a love beat over me again, Loosing its million desperate breakers wide; Sudden and terrible to rise and wane; Roaring the heavens apart; a reckless tide That casts upon the heart, as it recedes, Splinters and spars and dripping, salty weeds.”
Dorothy Parker, The Portable Dorothy Parker“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, The Collected Dorothy Parker“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.”
Dorothy Parker, The Collected 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.”
Dorothy Parker, The Portable Dorothy Parker“Little WordsWhen you are gone, there is nor bloom nor leaf,Nor singing sea at night, nor silver birds;And I can only stare, and shape my griefIn little words.I cannot conjure loveliness, to drownThe bitter woe that racks my cords apart.The weary pen that sets my sorrow downFeeds at my heart.There is no mercy in the shifting year,No beauty wraps me tenderly about.I turn to little words- so you, my dear,Can spell them out.”
Dorothy Parker, The Portable Dorothy Parker“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, The Collected Dorothy Parker