“You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think.” — Dorothy Parker | V2Melody

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

A playful defence of independent intelligence · Conversation / aphorism

Humour
Truth

About Dorothy Parker

Dorothy Parker

22 August 1893–7 June 1967

Dorothy Parker, born Dorothy Rothschild on 22 August 1893 and dead on 7 June 1967, became one of the most recognizable voices of twentieth-century American letters: a poet of compressed heartbreak, a theater and book critic of dangerous precision, a short-story writer of unusual psychological acuity, a screenwriter…

More by Dorothy Parker

Poems by Dorothy Parker

More remarks by Dorothy Parker

“Brevity is the soul of lingerie.”

A compact Shakespearean parody displaying the wordplay that made her reputation · Fashion caption, Vogue

Art
Joy

“If you're going to write, don't pretend to write down. It's going to be the best you can do, and it's the fact that it's the best you can do that kills you.”

Insisting that serious writing demands the fullest effort a writer can give · Interview, The Paris Review, 1956

Art
Truth

“I can't call myself a critic. Honestly I can only put down what I think and pray there's no libel suit, that's all.”

Deflating the dignity of literary criticism while defending personal judgement · Interview with Studs Terkel, 1959

Art
Truth