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Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 2,788
Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 2,788 |
On this day, 22 August, in 1893, Dorothy Parker was born. Miss Parker once said: "Maybe it is only I, but conditions are such these days, that if you use studiously correct grammar, people suspect you of homosexual tendencies."
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Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 2,788
Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 2,788 |
No Dorothy Parker fans out there?
She also once said "If all the girls who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn't be in the least surprised."
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,773
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,773 |
I'm a fan. Like the dinner companion of Oscar Wilde, I often (read something of hers and) wish I'd said that. And wouldn't a dinner party with both Parker and Wilde be fascinating?
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,289
veteran
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veteran
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,289 |
I'm a big Dorothy Parker fan. There are so many witty quips of hers, we could probably keep a thread going for weeks. Strangely, I don't think I've ever read anything she wrote, however. She is, I believe, pretty well forgotten except for those who enjoy a rapier-like riposte or a brilliant quip. Like the one when someone came into the Algonquin one day and said, "Coolidge is dead!" and she immediately asked, "How can they tell?"
Alas for her, she appointed her literary agent as executor of her estate with instructions that she was to be cremated, but nothing about what then. Her ashes reposed in a file cabinet for about a half a century and I believe they are now somewhere in Baltimore, of all places. (I suppose HLM is smiling somewhere about that.)
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Joined: May 2004
Posts: 89
journeyman
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journeyman
Joined: May 2004
Posts: 89 |
These are my two most favorite Dorothy Parker quotations, Father Steve. The second one seems to be a manifestation of the first. Wit has truth in it; wise-cracking is simply calisthenics with words.
The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.__________________________________________________________ 
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Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 2,788
Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 2,788 |
Dorothy Parker's ashes were interred in 1988 at a specially constructed memorial garden at the national headquarters of the NAACP in Baltimore. One may visit.
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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 4,189
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 4,189 |
My favorite Dorothy Parkerism was her famous pan of a Katherine Hepburn (no less!) stage performance:
"Miss Hepburn ran all the gamut of emotions from A to B."
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Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542 |
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 Roumania.
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,819
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,819 |
Any good books out there about D.P. for those of us who enjoy reading these quotes but are otherwise ignorant?
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Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 1,624
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 1,624 |
An unmarried NY socialite went to England and promptly had a baby. Miss Parker sent her a cable, saying "Congratulations. We didn't know you had it in you".
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