Dorothy Parker Quotes

Hyperbole is something I'd better avoid.

Hyperbole is not easily dealt with. Usually, it collapses under its own weight.

The speaking in perpetual hyperbole is comely in nothing but love.

Hyperbole was to Lyndon Johnson what oxygen is to life.

I think writers are prone to hyperbole sometimes.

False eloquence is exaggeration; true eloquence is emphasis.

Never a man to understate matters

A single overstatement, wherever or however it occurs, diminishes the whole, and a carefree superlative has the power to destroy, for the reader, the object of the writer's enthusiasm.

That was like throwing three pickled onions into a thimble!

Satire of satire tends to be self-canceling, and deliberate shock tactics soon lose their ability to shock, especially when they're too deliberate.

All passions exaggerate; and they are passions only because they do exaggerate.

I think that as is true in this industry, everything gets blown out of proportion because it's more fun for people to read about. It's even more fun to read about if the stories get wilder and wilder.

Reality bears no relationship to the super-heated rhetoric.

The only kind of statement worth making is an overstatement.

The point—the power to hurt—of all figures [of speech] consist in the truthfulness of their application.

Amplification is the vice of modern oratory.

We need to become more acutely conscious that words matter. None of us would deny that ideas and opinions matter, but we can sometimes be careless about how we express them. The words we choose to advance an idea, opinion, or point of view have a huge impact on how people react and respond to that view. When we use hyperbole, we increase the chances of being misunderstood and of promoting equally exaggerated counter-reactions, especially when people are reacting almost instantaneously.

Hyperbole engaged in consciously to achieve a desired effect can be, as we have noted, a useful rhetorical tool. Indeed, its use in this manner is sometimes called "exaggeration in the service of truth." However, there's much to be said for restraint of tongue and pen, and restraint refers not only to what we say but also to how we say it. It is possible, believe it or not, to be emphatic without indulging in overstatement; it is possible to be forceful without exaggerating.

I love the 20 million people that live in my state and 100 million tourists.

Satire, whether it be satire or not, everything has to have boundaries.

'Irony' is such an over-used word.

When one emphasizes, as Jacques Derrida once remarked, one always overemphasizes.

You know what's the greatest part of anything ever in the history of everything? Exaggeration. No, wait; it's correcting yourself. No, better yet, it's making lists.

Exaggeration is in the course of things. Nature sends no creature, no man into the world, without adding a small excess of his proper quality. Given the planet, it is still necessary to add the impulse; so, to every creature nature added a little violence of direction in its proper path, a shove to put it on its way; in every instance, a slight generosity, a drop too much.

Oh, don't mind me! Just the queen of the heavens, dying over here!