So
I’d like to find authoritative sources for two Dorothy Parker quotes. Here’s the first:
“I prefer the company of younger men. Their stories are shorter.”
No idea where I got that one. It’s too right not to be real, but I can’t a source yet. (That’s a job I’m giving ya’ll.)
The second quote I memorized instantly while reading a Robert Hughes book, though I don’t remember which one. (I’m guessing it was Culture of Complaint.) This is what Hughes said Parker wrote in a guest book at William Randolph Hearst‘s San Simeon castle, when the old man was still living with his consort, the actress Marion Davies:
“Upon my honor
I saw a madonna
standing in a niche,
above the door
of the private whore
of the world’s worst
son of a bitch”
Could be I’m one wrong about that one too. Dunno. Sources and corrections, anyone?
@AdamHertz tweets, According to YogaMairika.com, she didn’t actually write it; as proof said she’d never rhyme honor and Madonna.
Doesn’t give the first source, though.
Google books search.
(edited by DS so it works here)
Also at Google books, the opposite version of #1, a man saying it about younger women.