Straight from today’s Quotle — here’s who really said it, and the story behind it. Play again

Who really said it

Excuse my dust

Written by Dorothy Parker 1893–1967 · American poet, critic & short-story writer
Verified Free to reuse

Genuinely hers, and locatable to the page: Parker submitted “EXCUSE MY DUST!” as her own mock epitaph to Vanity Fair for June 1925, in a feature called “A Group of Artists Write Their Own Epitaphs.” Two caveats that matter: she did not coin the phrase — it was already a joke sign on the back of automobiles by 1913 — and it is not the inscription on her grave.

Last verified 17 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Verified quote & credit

“Excuse my dust” Dorothy Parker, submitted as her own mock epitaph to Vanity Fair, June 1925 ("A Group of Artists Write Their Own Epitaphs," pages 50–51; Parker's entry on page 51). Parker did not coin the phrase: it circulated from 1913 as a joke sign on the backs of automobiles. Nor is it the inscription on her grave — the headstone unveiled at Woodlawn Cemetery, the Bronx, on 23 August 2021 carries the closing stanza of her poem "Epitaph for a Darling Lady." Verified by Quotle.info.

Can you use it?

Free to use, including in commercial and paid presentations — no permission or licence needed.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the world of Dorothy Parker — American poet, critic & short-story writer. Theme: "Excuse my dust". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Excuse my dust". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The source, in full

Work
A Group of Artists Write Their Own Epitaphs
Published in
Vanity Fair, vol. 24, no. 4 — June 1925, Condé Nast, New York
Pages
50–51; Parker’s entry on p. 51, col. 3
Form
A self-composed mock epitaph, printed as a drawing of a headstone

Some Well-Known People Seize the Coveted Opportunity of Saying the Last Word

A number of artists, desiring to be saved from the ordinary run of tombstone literature, have here set down their epitaphs. This second batch of epitaphs, like those published in Vanity Fair in its October issue, certainly have the invaluable “personal touch”…

CI-GIT
Dorothy Parker
“EXCUSE MY DUST!” Vanity Fair, June 1925, p. 51

Parker’s entry is not a sentence in an essay — it is a small drawing of a headstone, one of roughly two dozen across the spread, alongside George Gershwin, W. C. Fields and the Four Marx Brothers. Ci-gît is the French formula for “here lies”: exactly the “tombstone literature” the feature set out to mock. Text as read in the Internet Archive’s scan of the issue, whose transcription does not reproduce accents.

Scanned magazine issue (1925)
Vanity Fair, vol. 24, no. 4 (June 1925) at the Internet Archive
Read Quote Investigator's full chronology

How we verified it

  • The primary issue, read directly. The Internet Archive’s scan of Vanity Fair, vol. 24, no. 4 (June 1925) ↗ carries the feature “A Group of Artists Write Their Own Epitaphs,” its standfirst “Some Well-Known People Seize the Coveted Opportunity of Saying the Last Word,” and Parker’s drawn headstone reading CI-GIT / Dorothy Parker / “EXCUSE MY DUST!”
  • Specialist anchor. Quote Investigator ↗ records the citation as “1925 June, Vanity Fair, A Group of Artists Write Their Own Epitaphs, Start Page 50, Quote Page 51, Column 3… (Verified on microfilm),” and concludes: “in 1925 ‘Vanity Fair’ collected and published self-selected epitaphs from celebrities… Dorothy Parker chose the comical expression under examination. Yet, the phrase was already in circulation in the automotive world, and Parker had cleverly reimagined its meaning.” Wikiquote ↗ agrees, listing it in its sourced Quotes section as her proposed epitaph, quoted in Vanity Fair (June 1925).
  • The phrase predates her. QI’s earliest citations are both from 1913 — the San Francisco Chronicle of 10 June and the humour magazine Judge of 13 December — and the phrase was familiar enough by 1920 to title a Wallace Reid racing picture for Famous Players–Lasky ↗, a print of which survives at the Library of Congress. So the words are Parker’s choice, not her invention.
  • What is on the stone. The headstone unveiled at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx on 23 August 2021 does not carry this line; the reported inscription ↗ is the closing stanza of “Epitaph for a Darling Lady,” which appears in Enough Rope (Boni & Liveright, 1926) ↗ as: “Leave for her a red young rose, / Go your way, and save your pity; / She is happy, for she knows / That her dust is very pretty.”
Public domain

Parker’s epitaph version reached print in Vanity Fair for June 1925 — the phrase itself was already in print by 1913 — comfortably before the 1931 cutoff that governs US public-domain status, and the whole issue is freely readable at the Internet Archive ↗. Parker wrote in English, so no translation rights arise — though this covers only the three words as printed in 1925, not her later books, which are a separate question.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

The author is right. Almost everything around it is wrong.

This one survives verification cleanly, so the failures are not about who — they are about what the words are and where they ended up. Three recurring errors:

Parker, credited with inventing the phrase borrowed, not coined

It was already motoring slang. Quote Investigator ↗ documents “Excuse my dust” in 1913 — a 10 June item in the San Francisco Chronicle and a 13 December cartoon in Judge — and it was the title of a 1920 Wallace Reid automobile-racing film ↗. QI’s verdict is that “the phrase was already in circulation in the automotive world, and Parker had cleverly reimagined its meaning.”

Presented as the inscription on her tombstone not carved there

Her headstone at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, unveiled on 23 August 2021, carries the closing stanza of her poem “Epitaph for a Darling Lady” ↗ instead. The phrase did appear on the 1988 NAACP memorial plaque in Baltimore, but in reported form — “For her epitaph she suggested, ‘Excuse my dust’” ↗ — not as the epitaph itself.

Confused with “Here lies the body of Dorothy Parker. Thank God!” different epitaph

That is her other self-composed epitaph, from the earlier Vanity Fair round in October 1924 (pp. 42–43), and Quote Investigator treats the two separately ↗. The pair are routinely quoted as one line, or swapped for each other.

The attribution holds and the wording is exact: Parker sent these three words to Vanity Fair for its June 1925 issue ↗ as a joke epitaph. Quote it as a printed magazine gag she wrote — not as a phrase she invented, and not as words on her stone.

Context

A motorists' apology, parked on a tombstone

Vanity Fair ran the gag twice. In its October 1924 issue it invited well-known people to compose their own gravestones, and the June 1925 spread introduces itself as the sequel: “A number of artists, desiring to be saved from the ordinary run of tombstone literature, have here set down their epitaphs. This second batch of epitaphs, like those published in Vanity Fair in its October issue, certainly have the invaluable ‘personal touch’…” Parker had supplied one for the first round too — “Here lies the body of Dorothy Parker. Thank God!” ↗ — so the three words everyone remembers were, strictly speaking, her second attempt.

The joke depends on something a 1925 reader would have caught instantly and a modern reader usually misses. “Excuse my dust” was motoring slang: a mock-apology hung on the back of a fast car for the cloud it threw at everyone behind it. Quote Investigator ↗ traces it to 1913 — a 10 June item in the San Francisco Chronicle and a 13 December cartoon in the humour magazine Judge — and by 1920 it was good enough to title a Wallace Reid racing picture ↗. Parker’s contribution was not the phrase but the swerve: she took a boast about speed and made it an apology from the grave. Her entry is even drawn as a headstone, headed CI-GIT — French for “here lies” — which is exactly the pompous “tombstone literature” the feature set out to mock.

She took a boast about how fast you were going and turned it into an apology for what you'd become.

What is actually carved on her grave

Parker died in New York on 7 June 1967. Her ashes went unclaimed for years, and in 1988 they were interred in a memorial garden at the NAACP’s Baltimore headquarters. The plaque there did carry the phrase — but as a report, not as an epitaph: “For her epitaph she suggested, ‘Excuse my dust’” ↗, set inside a longer dedication to her as a defender of human and civil rights.

In August 2020 the urn was quietly moved to Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, where her family had always intended her to lie, and on 23 August 2021 a headstone was unveiled. It does not say “Excuse my dust.” The family chose the closing stanza of her poem “Epitaph for a Darling Lady,” collected in Enough Rope (1926) ↗:

“Leave for her a red young rose, / Go your way, and save your pity; / She is happy, for she knows / That her dust is very pretty.”

Which is its own small joke on the researcher: the stone that turned down her famous dust line ends on the word dust anyway.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Mortality Humility

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Origin: Excuse My Dust — Quote Investigatorquoteinvestigator.com

The anchor investigation: Parker's June 1925 Vanity Fair submission (pp. 50–51, quote p. 51 col. 3, verified on microfilm) plus the 1913 automotive antecedents she was repurposing.
Vanity Fair, vol. 24, no. 4 (June 1925) — full issue scanarchive.org

The primary source. The issue contains "A Group of Artists Write Their Own Epitaphs" and Parker's drawn headstone reading CI-GIT / Dorothy Parker / "EXCUSE MY DUST!"
Dorothy Parker — Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Lists "Excuse my dust." in its sourced Quotes section, noted as her proposed epitaph for herself, quoted in Vanity Fair (June 1925).
Quote Origin: Here Lies the Body of Dorothy Parker. Thank God! — Quote Investigatorquoteinvestigator.com

Her other Vanity Fair epitaph, from the October 1924 first batch (pp. 42–43) — the one most often confused with this line.
Vanity Fair, vol. 23, no. 2 (October 1924) — full issue scanarchive.org

The earlier epitaph feature the June 1925 spread refers back to; its contents page lists "A Group of Artists Write Their Own Epitaphs . 42 and 43," with Parker's entry on p. 43.
Enough Rope: Poems (Boni & Liveright, 1926) — Project Gutenbergwww.gutenberg.org

Public-domain text of Parker's first collection, containing "Epitaph for a Darling Lady" — the poem whose closing stanza is on her Woodlawn headstone.
Dorothy Parker Gravestone Unveiled — Dorothy Parker Societydorothyparker.com

Account of the August 2021 Woodlawn Cemetery headstone: the family chose "Epitaph for a Darling Lady," not "Excuse my dust."

The author

Who was Dorothy Parker?

Dorothy Parker

1893–1967 · American poet, critic & short-story writer

Born in Long Branch, New Jersey on 22 August 1893, Parker wrote her way from a job at Vogue into the drama-critic’s chair at Vanity Fair, and became the sharpest voice at the Algonquin Round Table — the lunch circle of New York writers whose wisecracks were syndicated across the country in the 1920s. Her verse collection Enough Rope (1926) was a bestseller, and she later wrote for Hollywood before being blacklisted for her politics. She died in New York on 7 June 1967, leaving her literary estate to Martin Luther King Jr. — a bequest that, after his assassination, passed to the NAACP and eventually put her ashes in a memorial garden in Baltimore.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Cite this page

"A Group of Artists Write Their Own Epitaphs." Vanity Fair 24, no. 4 (June 1925): 50–51. Dorothy Parker's entry appears on page 51, column 3 (citation as recorded by Quote Investigator, verified on microfilm); wording independently confirmed in the Internet Archive's scan of the issue.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Excuse my dust’?” Last verified 17 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/excuse-my-dust/

Something wrong on this page?

Tell us what’s off. A link helps but isn’t required — “this is the wrong person” is a useful report on its own. Nothing here changes the page directly; it goes to our review queue and a human checks it.

Only used to tell you if we act on your report. We never sell or share it.

Copied