Dorothy Parker Quotes

I think people were a little bit too concerned about what I would or would not be allowed to say. So let me just get that out of the way and get on to the business of telling, you know, a story, or two, or three, or 15. And also to say, "Okay, look. Here it is, don't worry about it. The restrictions and the watered-down and all the stuff that you thought was gonna happen really isn't the case." So we done got that out the way, and now we can just kind of move on.

But I enjoy the opportunity to use swear symbols.

Books are feeders of brothels.

No one today knows what is indecent

Literary revolution and revolutionary literature did not create a beautiful new world but instead divested literature of its basic nature, promoted violence, and, by resorting to linguistic violence, made a battlefield of this domain of spiritual freedom.

You could be as vulgar as you want, as long as three tiny spots were covered.

And we must beg Homer and the other poets not to be angry if we strike out these and similar passages, not because they are unpoetical, or unattractive to the popular ear, but because the greater the poetical charm in them, the less are they meet for the ears of boys and men who are meant to be free, and who should fear slavery more than death.

A man forced to spend his life without ever having the right, without ever finding the time, to shut himself up all alone, no matter where, to think, to reflect, to work, to dream? Ah! my dear boy, a key, the key of a door which one can lock this is happiness, mark you, the only happiness!

The priceless heritage of our society is the unrestricted constitutional right of each member to think as he will. Thought control is a copyright of totalitarianism, and we have no claim to it.

When someone seeks," said Siddhartha, "then it easily happens that his eyes see only the thing that he seeks, and he is able to find nothing, to take in nothing because he always thinks only about the thing he is seeking, because he has one goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: having a goal. But finding means: being free, being open, having no goal.

I understand that people are afraid. Because I think censorship is about fear. It's just fear being projected onto art.

Photographs have always been the tar baby of censors and obscenity laws. Literature can certainly (if it's any good) conjure up the most pornographic imagination. But photographs dare to be real. No matter how contrived or constructed they are, there's that damn body staring you in the face.

Nobody has a right to speak more clearly than he thinks.

I think the beautiful thing about acting is you don't really know who you are. You're able to be whatever you want any day during the week.

What does censorship reveal? It reveals fear.

Totally. I think things are beautiful when you don’t plan them, and you don’t have any expectations, and you’re not trying to get somewhere in particular. You’re just enjoying it, and making something because you love it, and love the people that you’re playing with. I guess everything happens as a reason.

Scripts are kind of a bare bones type of reading material.

I think if religion closes discussion or exchange of ideas or curiosity about other views, it's not true to its core.

I think of death as a glad awakening from this troubled sleep which we call life; as an emancipation from a world, which, beautiful though it may be, is still a land of captivity.

Everyone has freedom to say whatever they want to say. I think it takes a stronger person to hold their tongue as opposed to speaking out.

I Still Approach A Scene As One Would Approach A Guitar Solo. You Don't Exactly Know How You're Going To Phrase This Or That. Which I Think Is Beautiful. That Idea Of Chance.

It didn't happen in the 70s. So I had a whole decade when I was writing these books and maybe there was a little bit here or there but there was no big effort to ban books.

Access to the outside world is preventing more censorship. I do think information flow is happening in China. .. There's no doubt in my mind that it's been a huge plus.

I think: the powers like to talk about "freedom" in order to wash the population's brains.

I believe that written stories will continue to survive because they answer an essential human need. I think movies might disappear before the novel disappears, because the novel is really one of the only places in the world where two strangers can meet on terms of absolute intimacy.