"The play holds the season's record, thus far, with a run of four evening performances and one matinée. By an odd coincidence, it ran just five performances too many. p. 121"

"In short, there is everything about this season's entertainment to make the Hippodrome what it always is—a Temple of the Arts to all those who hang pennants on their automobiles, use “Shake hands with my friend” as a formula for introduction, and sprinkle powdered sugar on their sliced tomatoes. p. 106"

"This use of soldiers to make a play popular seems too much like taking an unfair advantage of the uniform—hitting below the Sam Browne belt, as it were. p. 93"

"And you remember, Rabbi Wise has declared, in a heated moment, that our plays seem to be written for the hosiery buyers. If Dr. Wise had only witnessed our new summer reviews, he doubtless would have amended his statement to “read by the hosiery buyers.” p.89"

"The musical comedies of the month are She’s a Good Fellow and The Lady in Red, both of which owe their book and lyrics to Anne Caldwell—evidently a native of New York, judged by the casualness with which she rhymes “teacher” and “reach a.” p. 82"

"If the English version is in what, in our youth, we used to speak of affectionately as dear old iambic pentameter, the actors mercifully abstain from reciting it that way; they speak their lines as good, hardy prose. p. 76"

"You know how a play in dialect is. At the first act, you think, "How quaint!"; at the second act, you wish they would either stop using dialect or keep quiet; and at the third act, you wish you hadn't come. And Tillie, may I mention in passing, has four acts. p. 64"

"To quote the only line of Gertrude Stein's which I have ever been able to understand, "It is wonderful how I am not interested." p. 64"

"There is one thing about Fiddlers Three, though, that held my attention all through the evening: Try as I might I could only discern two fiddlers. p. 42"

"They exude an atmosphere of The New Republic—a sort of Crolier-than-thou air. p. 36"

"I thought that was going to be a good song, too, and then they went and rhymed “time” and “Rhine,” and spoiled everything. p. 24"

"Anyone can do that—the stunt lies in not doing it. p. 8"

"Sinbad is produced in accordance with the fine old Shubert precept that nothing succeeds like undress. p. 6"

"Almost overnight, Dorothy Parker was transformed from a woman of letters into a gin-soaked quote machine, with a martini in one hand and a dagger in the other. p. xiii"

"Dotty had Great Big Visions of Quietude. Dotty saw an Ad, and it Left her Flat. Dotty had a Great Big Snifter of Cyanide. And that (said Dotty) Is that."

"Katharine Hepburn delivered a striking performance that ran the gamut of emotions, from A to B."

"Brevity is the soul of lingerie."

"And there was that wholesale libel on a Yale prom. If all the girls attending it were laid end to end, Mrs Parker said, she wouldn't be at all surprised."

"That woman speaks eighteen languages, and can't say No in any of them."

"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."

"What fresh hell can this be?"

"You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think."

"It serves me right for putting all my eggs in one bastard."

"Too fucking busy, and vice versa."

"There is no such hour on the present clock as 6:30, New York time. Yet, as only New Yorkers know, if you can get through the twilight, you'll live through the night."

"[On being told of Calvin Coolidge's death] How do they know? (Coolidge was known as a man who said very few words.)"

"All those writers who write about their own childhood! Gentle God, if I wrote about mine you wouldn't sit in the same room with me."

"It's not the tragedies that kill us; it's the messes."

"There's a hell of a distance between wise-cracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wise-cracking is simply calisthenics with words."

"It takes me six months to do a story. I think it out and then write it sentence by sentence—no first draft. I can't write five words but that I change seven."

"One more drink and I'd have been under the host."

"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."

"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."

"And I'll stay away from Verlaine too; he was always chasing Rimbauds."

"The ones I like ... are "cheque" and "enclosed.""

"Drink and dance and laugh and lie, Love, the reeling midnight through, For tomorrow we shall die! (But, alas, we never do.)"

"The House Beautiful is, for me, the play lousy."

"A lady ... with all the poise of the Sphinx though but little of her mystery."

"That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment."

"And it is that word 'hummy,' my darlings, that marks the first place in The House at Pooh Corner at which Tonstant Weader fwowed up."

"Well, Aimee Semple McPherson has written a book. And were you to call it a little peach, you would not be so much as scratching its surface. It is the story of her life, and it is called In the Service of the King, which title is perhaps a bit dangerously suggestive of a romantic novel. It may be that this autobiography is set down in sincerity, frankness and simple effort. It may be, too, that the Statue of Liberty is situated in Lake Ontario."

"Salary is no object: I want only enough to keep body and soul apart."

"And she had It. It, hell; she had Those."

"Excuse my dust."

"When I have to think about it, I know the picture is wrong. And sizing is a form of thinking and coloring is too. My instinct about painting says, 'If you don’t think about it, it's right'. As soon as you have to decide and choose, it's wrong. And the more you decide about, the more wrong it gets. Some people, they paint abstract, so they sit there thinking about it because their thinking makes them feel they're doing something. But my thinking never makes me feel I'm doing anything."

"Business art is the step that comes after Art. I started as a commercial artist, and I want to finish as a business artist. After I did the thing called 'art' or whatever it's called, I went into business art. I wanted to be an Art Businessman or a Business Artist. Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. During the hippies era people put down the idea of business – they'd say 'Money is bad', and 'Working is bad', but making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art."

"Somebody said that Bertolt Brecht [German socialist writer of political theater] wanted everybody to think alike. I want everybody to think alike. But Brecht wanted to do it through Communism, in a way. Russia is doing it under government. It's happening here [in America] all by itself without being under a strict government; so if it's working without trying, why can't it work without being Communist? Everybody looks alike and acts alike, and we're getting more and more that way."

"Free countries are great, because you can actually sit in somebody else's space for a while and pretend you're a part of it. You can sit in the Plaza Hotel and you don't even have to live there. You can just sit and watch the people go by."

"When I look at things, I always see the space they occupy. I always want the space to reappear, to make a comeback, because it's lost space when there's something in it. If I see a chair in a beautiful space, no matter how beautiful the chair is, it can never be as beautiful to me as the plain space."

"I really believe in empty spaces, although, as an artist, I make a lot of junk. Empty space is never-wasted space. Wasted space is any space that has art in it. An artist is somebody who produces things that people don't need to have but that he, for some reason, thinks it would be a good idea to give them."