If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.
Usually credited to Dorothy Parker
Poet, short story writer, critic and founding member of the Algonquin Round Table, Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) is remembered as one of the funniest and most cutting observers of human nature.
She was also famous for her frankness and her willingness to talk about anything, whatever the company. Parker has been celebrated in song, in film and in societies devoted to her memory. Before there were comedians like Bette Midler or Kathy Griffin, there was Dorothy Parker. As with many great wits, more lines are attributed to her than she can have said, and the quotation above has also been credited to others, but it is very much in her spirit.
The Round Table and its poker game
From 1919, a group of writers, critics and actors met for lunch almost daily at the Algonquin Hotel in Manhattan: Parker, Robert Benchley, Robert E. Sherwood, Alexander Woollcott, George S. Kaufman, Edna Ferber and others. They called themselves the Vicious Circle, and their quips filled the newspaper columns of the 1920s.
Many of the same men also played in a famous Saturday-night poker game, the Thanatopsis Literary and Inside Straight Club, which at times included Harpo Marx and Heywood Broun. The stakes could run high, and legend has it that some of the players lost more at cards in a night than they earned from a week of writing. Parker, who was perpetually short of money despite her success, had an ironic view of fortune and those who had it. Her stories and poems are full of people gambling on love and losing.
Where to start with Parker
- Enough Rope (1926), her first poetry collection, which became a surprise bestseller.
- "Big Blonde", the short story that won the O. Henry Award in 1929.
- The Portable Dorothy Parker, still the best single collection of her stories, poems and reviews.
More writers on money, risk and luck: Mark Twain on speculation and Hunter S. Thompson in Las Vegas. Or browse all author quotes.
