Women's Wicked Wit: From Jane Austen to Rosanne Barr [Paperback]

Michelle Lovric (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2002

Once a girl gets past the age of eight, she knows her deadliest weapon is her tongue. Women’s Wicked Wit is a sumptuous selection of 2,000 of women’s most acerbic comments on life, chock-full of quotations from Maria Callas, Cher, Hillary Clinton, Marlene Dietrich, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Fran Lebowitz, Sophia Loren, Madonna, Dolly Parton, Miss Piggy, Joan Rivers, Rita Rudner, Mae West, Oprah Winfrey, Virginia Woolf, and many more. Nothing and no one escapes these women’s glare: women on women, women on men and other animals, and a huge range of other subjects. The whole proves that when it comes to cutting remarks, the female of the species is indeed deadlier than the male.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"Our marriage license turned out to be a learner's permit," quips Joan Rivers. And as for Joy Behar: "Sure I want a man in my house, but not in my life." In Women's Wicked Wit from Jane Austen to Roseanne Barr, Michelle Lovric (Love Letters: An Anthology of Passion) quotes intellectuals, movie stars, pop singers, artists, comedians, novelists and women of every other stripe on topics ranging from "The Sex War" and "Marriage and Divorce" to "Work, Power & Money" and "The Arts." There is something for everyone in these pithy, funny, outrageous, enigmatic, feminist, antifeminist, arrogant, self-mocking quotations.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"There is something for everyone in these pithy, funny, outrageous, enigmatic, feminist, antifeminist, arrogant, self-mocking quotations." -- Publishers Weekly

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Chicago Review Press (April 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 155652451X
• ISBN-13: 978-1556524516
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,085,428 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hillarious, March 8, 2005

By 

D. Walker (So. Cal, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Women's Wicked Wit: From Jane Austen to Rosanne Barr (Paperback)

I bought this book as a gift and have since purchased a copy for myself. The wit is superb. Fabulous!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars All the Savage Wit Fit to Print (and then some ... that is not), October 22, 2008

By 

Herbert L Calhoun "paulocal" (Falls Church, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Women's Wicked Wit: From Jane Austen to Rosanne Barr (Paperback)

A great little compendium filled with several centuries of saws, wit, adages and one-liners for those like myself "into comedy and wit." They are especially appropriate for those in search of the perfect "one liners" to add to a speech, or to keep an annoying acquaintance at bay, or as a "comeback" to sharp underhanded but oblique attacks.

It would be (reverse) sexist to say that women seem to have the sharpest tongues in the arsenal of the armory of the verbal arts, but if one judges by this book, it must be true. So I'll just be "politically incorrect" and "a (reverse) sexist," and say so: These adages and one liners, strung out across history, are not just funny, but they are, just as the book describes them, simply wicked, no! savage, devious, and pure evil. That is to say, delicious.

Five stars

5.0 out of 5 stars sparkling bits of reality, November 27, 2011

By 

Bruce P. Barten (Saint Paul, MN United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Women's Wicked Wit: From Jane Austen to Rosanne Barr (Paperback)

Wicked wit is the Super-Addressee of modern culture or the discovery of cold fusion with creeping crud, whichever happens first. The literary life of women can furnish a psychotic multiplicity of nice bits of intellectual subjectivity. The index of Women's Wicked Wit (2000, 2002) by Michelle Lovric provides some pages for comments about Freud, including a reaction to his famous complaint:

It beats me how Freud could say
"What do women want?"
as if we must all want the same things.
(Katherine Whitehorn).

In addition to having some examples from Mae West, who delighted audiences by teasing men, Women's Wicked Wit has literary gems from Jane Austen, Colette, Ouida, Dorothy Parker and Virginia Woolf, backed by comments from stars like Madonna and the comments on culture produced by women who may have something in common with Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is quoted saying:

I apparently remind some people
of their mother-in-law or their boss,
or something. (p. 231).

The book begins with a section Women on Women (pp. 1-4) which is much shorter than Women on Men (pp. 5-26). The idea of universal laws is probably left over from a time when women were not expected to say:

[Some guys] make love like they
were the only ones in the room,
which I think is a holdover from
when they were. (p. 21).
(Diane West).

Women now have the kind of social acceptance that Martin Luther thought justification by faith could produce when he translated the Bible into German. Martin Luther had been isolated with monks when his religious ideas diverged from the institutional thinking of organized religion. Hedda Hopper is quoted when she felt the same way about Hollywood:

Inasmuch as I left home to escape
the heritage of being the butcher's
daughter, it seems ironical that I
was to spend the rest of my life
in dealing in ham. (p. 142).