Quotes & Sayings About Cocktail Parties

A deep river of must-have school mania runs through the chattering classes. There is, of course, the parental adrenaline rush at suburban cocktail parties that comes from announcing one's son or daughter as an Ivy Leaguer. — Sandra Tsing Loh

Memorial services are the cocktail parties of the geriatric set. — Harold Macmillan

These stories at times to be stories of a long-lost world when the city of New York was still filled with a river light, when you heard Benny Goodman quartets from a radio in the corner stationary store, when almost everybody wore a hat. Here is the last of that generation of chain smokers who woke to the world in the morning with their coughing, who used to get stoned at cocktail parties and perform obsolete dance steps like 'the Cleveland Chicken,' sail for Europe on ships, who were nostalgic for love and happiness, and whose gods were as ancient as yours and mine, whoever you are. — John Cheever

Criticism should be done by critics, and a critic should have some training and some love of the medium he is discussing. But these days, gossip-columnist training seems to be enough qualification. I suppose an ability to stand on your feet through interminable cocktail parties and swig interminable gins in between devouring masses of fried prawns may just possibly help you to understand and appreciate what a director is getting at, but for the life of me I can't see how. — Peter Sellers

A simple leather jacket ... has gotten me through cocktail parties in New York and cold nights in Afghanistan. — Ronan Farrow

[Ted] Cruz railed against his fellow senators for not appreciating the risk that Obamacare would destroy healthcare for America's families ... Cruz then lodged a more general complaint against his Senate colleagues who, he said, seemed more concerned with "cocktail parties in Washington, D.C." than with their constituents. Referring to calls that he said were pouring in from around the country, begging legislators to resist and defund, Cruz noted, "It is apparently an imposition on some members of this body for their constituents to pick up the phone and ask for assistance." As I heard him say that, I picked up the phone and called Cruz's local constituent service office in Houston. "Could someone there give me information about how to enroll in Obamacare?" I asked, when I was put on the phone with one of the senator's case workers. "No. We don't support the bill, and think it's a bad idea," I was told. — Steven Brill

Meanwhile you just lived on and there was nothing to it. She understood perfectly well why people had cocktail parties, and jazzed, and Charlestoned till they were ready to drop. You had to take it out some way or other, your youth, or it ate you up. But what a ghastly thing, this youth! You felt as old as Methuselah, and yet the thing fizzed somehow, and didn't let you be comfortable. A mean sort of life! And no prospect! She almost wished she had gone off with Mick, and made her life one long cocktail party, and jazz evening. Anyhow that was better than just mooning yourself into the grave. — D.H. Lawrence

What had I expected of the first child? Everything. Rocket scientist. Neurosurgeon. Designated hitter. We talked wisely at cocktail parties about the sad mistake our mothers had made in pinning all their hopes and dreams on us. We were full of it. — Anna Quindlen

This book is a tribute to the men and women who dared. Who, to this day, endure ignorance, closed minds, righteousness, and prudery. Their lives are not easy. But their cocktail parties are the best. p — Mary Roach

There were times when I was broke, when I was down in Florida and I had to go to cocktail parties for 500 bucks - to see the guy that used to be in pictures. I'm not ashamed of that. I've never done anything that I was ashamed of. I've done a lot of things I didn't mean to do. — Mickey Rooney

Responding to non sequiturs - at cocktail parties, on public transportation, in ticket lines at the movie theater - is dicey enough, — Stephen King

I wasn't political enough to write articles about myself or go to cocktail parties, meaning that not only has my art been pirated and my intellectual property rights stolen, but my work has been misrepresented. — Michael Heizer

Indeed cocktail parties are death as I am sure 99 per cent of DS colleagues would agree. Whoever it was who suggested an international treaty banning National Day receptions should be canonised. — S.J. Parris

During holiday parties I end up recycling a lot of my cocktail dresses and just wearing a layering piece, like a blazer and tights, with it. — Lauren Conrad

I didn't fully process this concept until I was on my way back to the States. A few thousand feet over the Atlantic, I began to unpack this idea I had held, unquestioned, for so long. Was having an adventure really about doing the most daring, bold, energetic thing? Was it about having stories to tell at cocktail parties? Was it about freedom and travel and not being tied down? Or did it have something to do with your own heart and your own courage, in whatever form that came? — Various

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. In the nonprofit world, the right picture is worth tens of thousands of dollars. I use PhotoPad to sync our Samasource Flickr account to my iPad and slip it out of my purse at cocktail parties to tell our story. — Leila Janah

So my grandmother was not without humanity. and if she wore cocktail dresses when she labored in the garden, they were cocktail dresses she no longer intended to wear to cocktail parties. even in her rose garden she did not want to appear underdressed. if the dresses got too dirty from gardening, she threw them out. when my mother suggested to her that she might have them cleaned, my grandmother said, "what? and have those people at the cleaners what i was doing in a dress to make it that dirty?"
from my grandmother i learned that logic is relative. — John Irving

People were hanging out in these places, and just like at cocktail parties, they needed something to do together. I thought, 'How can we fit games into someone's life?' — Mark Pincus

The truth is I hate cocktail parties when the only person I know is my supposed date, and he abandons me the minute we come in the door. — Mary Higgins Clark

For everyone, though, the persona must relate to objects and protect the subject. This is its dual function. While introverts can be very outgoing with a few people, in a large group they shrink and disappear and the persona often feels inadequate, particularly with strangers and in situations in which the introvert does not occupy a defined role. Cocktail parties are a torture, but acting a role on stage may be a pure joy and pleasure. Many famous actors and actresses are quite deeply introverted. In private they may be shy, but given a public role they feel protected and secure and can easily pass as the most extroverted types imaginable. — Murray Stein

Children's books are written to be read, adult books are written to be talked about at cocktail parties — Lloyd Alexander

Not too many people in cocktail parties are aware of Bioprinting and growing organs, or the coming technological singularity; I've seen very little philosophical speculation about how far we can go, how much we could achieve. — Jason Silva

'The Mark' I played a psychiatrist. And in the '50's everybody went to a psychiatrist because if you didn't, you'd have nothing to talk about at cocktail parties. — Rod Steiger

Any story told in this machine age must be a story of fragments, for fragments are all the world has left: interrupted threads of talk at crowded cocktail parties; snatches of poems heard as a radio dial spins through its arc; incomplete commandments reclaimed from shattered stones. — Dexter Palmer

It is more fun to listen to the radio speeches of a dictator than to study economic treatises. The entrepreneurs and technologists who pave the way for economic improvement work in seclusion; their work is not suitable to be visualized on the screen. But the dictators, intent upon spreading death and destruction, are spectacularly in sight of the public. Dressed in military garb they eclipse in the eyes of the movie-goers the colourless bourgeois in plain clothes. The problems of society's economic organization are not suitable for light talk at fashionable cocktail parties. Neither can they be dealt with adequately by demagogues haranguing mass assemblies. They are serious things. They require painstaking study. They must not be taken lightly. — Ludwig Von Mises

Ms. Ginsberg. I wonder if you can help me. I have a legal question," Felicity Mason said. Great. I hated giving out free legal advice at parties, but at that moment, I would have drafted her will in crayon on a cocktail napkin to get away from Cole. — N.M. Silber

My sister and I used to act as maids and waitresses at my great aunt and uncle's cocktail parties, which were very much sort of retired, minor stars of the Yiddish theater and the Yiddish opera. — Amy Bloom

What reader or dreamer doesn't imagine the romantic life of a writer, who lingers between the desk and the fridge in the morning and in the evening attends cocktail parties thrown by nouveaux riches and the society ladies who hardly ever have the time to read? — Rawi Hage

Cocktail parties ... are usually not parties at all but mass ceremonials designed to clear up at one great stroke a wealth of obligations ... — Phyllis McGinley

As a child, I always enjoyed - my parents used to have these little cocktail parties - and I always loved trying to get the adults to tell me things they weren't supposed to say. And in many ways, that's what my job is today; it's getting people to tell me things that they probably are otherwise not supposed to say. — Andrew Ross Sorkin

The longing to belong and to be prized by one's peers permeates childhood and adolescence and can be compelling and anxiety provoking at any time in life, as the common dread of cocktail parties in adulthood attests. This need -- as old and as potent as erotic desire -- is a fundamental part of being human; according to object relations theory, we become ourselves by being recognized and loved by others. — Jeanne Safer

Publishers, editors, agents all have one thing in common, aside from their love of cocktail parties. It's an incredible taste and an ability to find and nurture authors. — John Hodgman

I am not someone who likes cocktail parties or large dinner parties, but I have to attend them often. I much prefer very small dinners with close friends. — Tom Ford

Be undeniably good. When people ask me how do you make it in show business or whatever, what I always tell them & nobody ever takes note of it 'cause it's not the answer they wanted to hear-what they want to hear is here's how you get an agent, here's how you write a script, here's how you do this-but I always say, "Be so good they can't ignore you." If somebody's thinking, "How can I be really good?" people are going to come to you. It's much easier doing it that way than going to cocktail parties. — Steve Martin

From the standpoint of integrity, I think we all need to own up to our dirty little secrets. I believe that when we are open about our own strange desires or unusual lives, it paves the way for others to do the same.

In the past thirty years, gay men and lesbians took a lot of flack to tell the truth about their love lives and their courage opened the door for a mass migration out of the closet. We're now at a moment in time when unconventional families (even thirty-year triads and gay couples) are losing their children in custody battles because their families don't conform to mainstream ideas about what a family should be.

Given this context, I want to be someone who stands up for my choices even if they're unpopular, even if I get snickers at cocktail parties. — Victoria Vantoch

My interest is a lonely one. I cannot trot it out at cocktail parties. I feel sometimes as if I have spent a large part of my life learning a dead language that no one I know can speak. — Anne Fadiman

But the important thing is that I don't do anything else. I avoid social life normally associated with publishing. I don't go to the cocktail parties, I don't give or go to dinner parties. I need that time in the evening because I can do a tremendous amount of work then. And I can concentrate. When I sit down to write I never brood. I have so many other things to do, with my children and teaching, that I can't afford it ... — Toni Morrison

But I have had to give up certain things in my life. One is shopping. Two is lunch with the girls. Three is cocktail parties, and four is studying my lines. — Joan Collins

There are those who write because they believe they have something so marvelous that it will make them famous and wealthy, a lauded commodity who will be invited to a lifetime of cocktail parties. — Edward P. Jones

Meetings ... are rather like cocktail parties. You don't want to go, but you're cross not to be asked. — Jilly Cooper

They sought each other, missed each other, at cocktail parties, in train terminals, at flower shops, their fin de siecle Nokias gaining symbolic power with each scene. — Sam Lipsyte

I don't want to think too much about art, you see. I don't want to attend symposia, listen to papers, or discuss it at cocktail parties ... What I want to do is clutch my heart and fall down when I see it. (Mr. Nannuzzi to Edgar) — Stephen King

A cocktail party is a place where you talk with a person you do not know about a subject you have no interest in. — Lin Yutang

Children's literature is considerably more functional than a good portion of adult literature. If I were cynical, I might say: Children's books are written to be read; adult books are written to be talked about at cocktail parties.
There may be more truth that cynicism in that statement. My impression is that many adult books are written only to shock the reader (a short term goal, since shock quickly turns into boredom) or as calisthenics for the author's ego.
On the other hand, children's literature seems an area where books function as they were meant to; where they amaze, delight, and move our emotions. We can respect and admire any number of current adult books, but I find it hard to love them. — Lloyd Alexander

We had cocktail parties and I'd stay up until 5 in the morning. — Dorothy Malone

I don't run with anybody's herd. I don't like crowds. I don't like going to fancy places. I don't like the whole nightclub scene. Cocktail parties drive me mad. So I do my job and I stay away from the rest of it. — Johnny Carson

What we know of other people's only our memory of the moments during which we knew them. — T. S. Eliot

Unbelievable! I said, What would I be doing walking the streets at night as a stuffed olive- gate-crashing cocktail parties? — Louise Rennison

I didn't work for Jimmy Carter all those years to go to cocktail parties. I was there as a political adviser, a short-order cook, to work on topical matters. — Hamilton Jordan

My father found cocktail parties challenging. — Justin Trudeau

Perhaps what we should be asking at cocktail parties is not, Where do you go to school? but, Why did you go to school? — Race Bannon

Hear no evil, speak no evil, and you won't be invited to cocktail parties. — Oscar Wilde

Writing about the indignities of old age: the daunting stairway to the restaurant restroom, the benefits of a wheelchair in airports and its disadvantages at cocktail parties, giving the user what he described as a child's-eye view of the party and a crotch-level view of the guests.
Dying is a matter of slapstick and pratfalls. The aging process is not gradual or gentle. It rushes up, pushes you over and runs off laughing. No one should grow old who isn't ready to appear ridiculous. — John Mortimer

I hated giving out free legal advice at parties, but at that moment, I would have drafted her will in crayon on a cocktail napkin ... — N.M. Silber

Large cocktail parties are an infamous technique for ridding yourself of social obligations to people you usually don't know well or like much, which is such an unpromising beginning that I've rarely known one that recovered and turned into a great party. — Barbara Walters