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"It costs me never a stab nor squirm / To tread by chance upon a worm. / Aha, my little dear, / I say, Your clan will pay me back one day."
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"I love writing poetry because it's pretty. I love writing pretty."

"A poet is not an inventor. A poet is a player that plays with words on the field of human imagination to excite a reader's mind with the colors of emotion."

"Amore is loveconfessed to you in haiku.Do you love me too?"

"The lamp hummed:'Regard the moon,La lune ne garde aucune rancune,She winks a feeble eye,She smiles into corners.She smoothes the hair of the grass.The moon has lost her memory.A washed-out smallpox cracks her face,Her hand twists a paper rose,That smells of dust and old Cologne,She is aloneWith all the old nocturnal smellsThat cross and cross across her brain."The reminiscence comesOf sunless dry geraniumsAnd dust in crevices,Smells of chestnuts in the streets,And female smells in shuttered rooms,And cigarettes in corridorsAnd cocktail smells in bars."

"Poets are shameless with their experiences: they exploit them."

"In a real poem a sound does not swallow a letter, but a letter swallows a sound."
Explore more quotes by Dorothy Parker


"I never see that prettiest thing-A cherry bough gone white with Spring-But what I think, 'How gay 'twould beTo hang me from a flowering tree."


"Yet, as only New Yorkers know, if you can get through the twilight, you'll live through the night."


"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."


"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."


"Be you wise and never sad,You will get your lovely lad.Never serious be, nor true,And your wish will come to you--And if that makes you happy, kid,You'll be the first it ever did."


"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."


"Some men break your heart in two,Some men fawn and flatter,Some men never look at you;And that cleans up the matter."
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