Dorothy Parker · 457 pages
Rating: (1.2K votes)
“Lips that taste of tears, they say,
Are the best for kissing.”
― Dorothy Parker, quote from The Poetry and Short Stories of Dorothy Parker (Modern Library)
“Oh, it's so easy to be sweet to people before you love them.”
― Dorothy Parker, quote from The Poetry and Short Stories of Dorothy Parker (Modern Library)
“When asked by her publisher why her work had not been submitted while on her honeymoon: "I've been too fucking busy or vice versa”
― Dorothy Parker, quote from The Poetry and Short Stories of Dorothy Parker (Modern Library)
“Every love's the love before
In a duller dress.”
― Dorothy Parker, quote from The Poetry and Short Stories of Dorothy Parker (Modern Library)
Dorothy Parker
Born place: in Long Branch, New Jersey, The United States
Born date August 22, 1893
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“The banal perception
- all the most profound perceptions are banal,
at most one man finds a somewhat more original expression for it than another man
- that we know nothing at all except what we have experienced ourselves.”
― Victor Klemperer, quote from I Will Bear Witness 1933-41 A Diary of the Nazi Years
“Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship--be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles--is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.
Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings.
They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing.”
― David Foster Wallace, quote from This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life
“The real reason I couldn’t tear my gaze away, the thing that
turned my muscles to ice even as my skin burned, was the one
and only thought running through my mind: That’s him. That is
the guy from my dream.”
― Anastasia Hopcus, quote from Shadow Hills
“Sometimes, thought Jane, the person who could make you happiest is the one you overlook, the one who waits patiently in the wings.”
― Tess Gerritsen, quote from The Keepsake
“I’m assuming you’re as mystified by this as the rest of us, Rasputin.
No. I’m not. I have been planning to destroy the Breakworld since I was a child.
[silence]
This is why I don’t make so many jokes. I never know when is good.”
― Joss Whedon, quote from Astonishing X-Men, Volume 4: Unstoppable
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