17 Dorothy Parker quotes every secondary school student can relate to
It's like she's your soul sister ...Dorothy Parker was an American poet, short story writer and critic most famous for her wit and wisecracks. Thanks to that, she also has pretty much the coolest quotes of all time. Here’s a bunch of them to apply to your high school life!
1.How you feel about your entire high school career
“I'm never going to accomplish anything; that's perfectly clear to me. I'm never going to be famous. My name will never be writ large on the roster of Those Who Do Things. I don't do anything. Not one single thing. I used to bite my nails, but I don't even do that any more.”
Here Lies: The Collected Stories of Dorothy Parker
2. Those awful eight hours of sitting still ... listening
“Trapped like a trap in a trap”
The Portable Dorothy Parker
3. Writing an essay
“I might repeat to myself, slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound; if I can remember any of the damn things.”
Here Lies: The Collected Stories of Dorothy Parker
4. Writing an essay, pt 2
“I can’t write five words but that I change seven.”
Interview with The Paris Review
5. Schoolwork in general
“I hate writing, I love having written.”
(Attributed) Rhymes with Vain
6. When facing an endless pile of revision, textbooks, and essays
“All right, God, send me to hell.”
A Telephone Call
7. Being asked how you think you did after handing in an exam or assignment
“This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”
(Attributed) The Algonquin Wits
8. Boring assigned reading
“I know that an author must be brave enough to chop away clinging tentacles of good taste for the sake of a great work. But this is no great work, you see.”
From a review on The Socialist Looks at Literature
9. Trials of classrooms
“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.”
The Portable Dorothy Parker
10. Pocket money―or lack thereof
“I hate almost all rich people, but I think I'd be darling at it.”
Interview with The Paris Review
11. On classmates who get more pocket money
“If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people He gave it to.”
(Attributed) The Natural History of the Rich
12. Getting ready for school each day
“The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue.”
(Attributed) Women Know Everything!
13. School lunches
“This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it."
Women Know Everything!
14. Everything in high school.
“What fresh hell is this?”
The Portable Dorothy Parker
15. But despite everything, the people that are truly there for you always make it better.
“Constant use had not worn ragged the fabric of their friendship.”
The Standard of Living
16. Especially ones who indulge in gossip with you.
“It’s easier to write about those you hate - just as it’s easier to criticise a bad play or a bad book.”
Interview with The Paris Review
17. Experience is the best teacher.
“And if my heart be scarred and burned / The safer, I, for all I learned.”
Sunset Gun: Poems