Nora Ephron Quotes
Quotations and aphorisms by Nora Ephron:
I survived turning 60, I was not thrilled to turn 61, I was less thrilled to turn 62, I didn't much like being 63, I loathed being 64, and I will hate being 65. I don't let on about such things in person; in person, I am cheerful and Pollyanna-ish. But the honest truth is that it's sad to be over 60.
~Nora Ephron
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Directing movies is the best job there is, that's all. I can hardly say a word after that. It's just a great job.
~Nora Ephron
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When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.
~Nora Ephron
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E-mail is a whole new way of being friends with people: intimate but not, chatty but not, communicative but not; in short, friends but not. What a breakthrough. How did we ever live without it? I have more to say on this subject, but I have to answer an instant message from someone I almost know.
~Nora Ephron
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I don't think there was ever a dish that changed my life. I certainly remember a constant series of things that I had for the first time and thought, 'Where has this been all my life?' One was brie. I mean, oh my God! One was my first soft-shell crabs.
~Nora Ephron
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All I do when I write scripts is think about food: 'Have I worked long enough to justify a walk to the kitchen?'
~Nora Ephron
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When you're young, you think that clothes are almost magical, and that if you wear the right thing - to school, to the prom, on the date, etc. - something's going to happen. Black, it's the anti-magical thing. It comes from the recognition that it is not going to be 'the' dress.
~Nora Ephron
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I just bring a black turtleneck sweater everywhere - it's the greatest purchase of my life. Period.
~Nora Ephron
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In my sex fantasy, nobody ever loves me for my mind.
~Nora Ephron
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I'm religious about salted butter. I don't understand how it happened that everyone thought we should all have sweet butter. I blame the French.
~Nora Ephron
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The realization that I may have only a few good years remaining has hit me with real force, and I have done a lot of thinking as a result. I would like to have come up with something profound, but I haven't.
~Nora Ephron
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At the age of 55, you will get a saggy roll just above your waist, even if you are painfully thin.
~Nora Ephron
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I'm a good cook, and I look at something like 'Iron Chef' and think, 'It's a good thing I already know how to cook' - because I would never think I could do it if I watched these shows.
~Nora Ephron
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When you slip on a banana peel, people laugh at you; but when you tell people you slipped on a banana peel, it's your laugh. So you become the hero rather than the victim of the joke.
~Nora Ephron
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I don't have writer's block, really. I do have times when I can't get the lead, and that is the only part of the story which I have serious trouble with. I don't write a word of the article until I have the lead. It just sets the whole tone - the whole point of view.
~Nora Ephron
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I was always proud of being tough-minded, and I think I still am, but in my old age I've got a little softer in the head, and that's all right.
~Nora Ephron
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I have always thought it was a terrible shame that the women's movement didn't realise how much easier it was to reach people by making them laugh than by shaking a fist and saying, 'Don't you see how oppressed you are?'
~Nora Ephron
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Beware of men who cry. It's true that men who cry are sensitive to and in touch with feelings, but the only feelings they tend to be sensitive to and in touch with are their own.
~Nora Ephron
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The neck starts to go at 43, and that's that.
~Nora Ephron
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I buy a lot of cookbooks. Some of them you just kind of read, and you try one recipe, and it doesn't really work. So then you don't go back to it. The new Ina Garten cookbook, which is called 'Back to Basics,' I have not had a failure with. It is the most fantastic cookbook. I think I bought 20 copies of it for friends.
~Nora Ephron
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Every 10 years or so, there was a moment when I'd say, even subconsciously, 'Is that all there is?' You've got to find ways to keep it fresh for yourself.
~Nora Ephron
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My mother was a good recreational cook, but what she basically believed about cooking was that if you worked hard and prospered, someone else would do it for you.
~Nora Ephron
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Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.
~Nora Ephron
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I am the kind of person who really will drive hours for a bowl of chili. I'm not a three-star restaurant kind of a person; I'm just a food person.
~Nora Ephron
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When we were working on 'Julie & Julia,' I went back to the Julia Child cookbook and made some things I haven't made in a while, one being beef bourguignon, which to me is a hilariously 1960s dish that everyone felt they had to serve at a dinner party or they weren't a grown-up.
~Nora Ephron
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Writing is what I do. It's like breathing to me at a certain point, but if I couldn't write, I do like cooking.
~Nora Ephron
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I just want to go on making movies, and some of them will be completely meaningless, except, of course, to me.
~Nora Ephron
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Whenever I get married, I start buying Gourmet magazine.
~Nora Ephron
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Everyone loves fried chicken, Don't ever make it. Ever. Buy it from a place that makes good fried chicken.
~Nora Ephron
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I think when you get older, things come along that you know are a test in some way of your ability to stay with it. And when e-mail came along, I was just going to fall in love with it. And I did. I can't believe it now - it's like one of those ex-husbands that you think, 'What was I thinking?'
~Nora Ephron
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Washington is a city of important men and the women they married before they grew up.
~Nora Ephron
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Nothing like mashed potatoes when you're feeling blue. Nothing like getting into bed with a bowl of hot mashed potatoes already loaded with butter, and methodically adding a thin, cold slice of butter to every forkful.
~Nora Ephron
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I don't think any day is worth living without thinking about what you're going to eat next at all times.
~Nora Ephron
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My second divorce was the worst kind of divorce. There were two children; one had just been born. My husband was in love with someone else.
~Nora Ephron
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In California, of course, they never break up couples at dinner for fear of what might happen if someone's husband were seated next to someone else's very young girlfriend. But dinners with couples seated next to one another are always deadly dull, which is why there are almost no good dinner parties in the entire state of California.
~Nora Ephron
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Food was supposed to be a slightly bigger part of 'Heartburn,' and it actually didn't turn out to be because of me. I just didn't find a way to make it a bigger part of the movie as I should have, and we cut several scenes in which food was a major character.
~Nora Ephron
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The best divorce is the kind where there are no children. That was my first divorce. You walk out the door and you never look back.
~Nora Ephron
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I am continually fascinated at the difficulty intelligent people have in distinguishing what is controversial from what is merely offensive.
~Nora Ephron
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Insane people are always sure that they are fine. It is only the sane people who are willing to admit that they are crazy.
~Nora Ephron
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If only I had grown up worshipping Julia Child. I was already grown up - thank you very much - when Julia Child's book was published. When I moved to New York in 1962, you had to own it.
~Nora Ephron
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I have now been married to my third husband for more than 20 years. But when you've had children with someone you're divorced from, divorce defines everything; it's the lurking fact, a slice of anger in the pie of your brain.
~Nora Ephron
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Your hair doesn't need to be washed every day any more than your black pants have to be dry-cleaned every time you wear them.
~Nora Ephron
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If pregnancy were a book they would cut the last two chapters.
~Nora Ephron
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You do get to a certain point in life where you have to realistically, I think, understand that the days are getting shorter, and you can't put things off thinking you'll get to them someday. If you really want to do them, you better do them. There are simply too many people getting sick, and sooner or later you will.
~Nora Ephron
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Death is a sniper. It strikes people you love, people you like, people you know - it's everywhere. You could be next. But then you turn out not to be. But then again, you could be.
~Nora Ephron
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I use those medical gloves that fit very tightly and are disposable for all chopping - peppers, onions, garlic, etc. Very Lady Macbeth, I think.
~Nora Ephron
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What my mother believed about cooking is that if you worked hard and prospered, someone else would do it for you.
~Nora Ephron
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I think that readers believe that a writer becomes friends with the people he interviews and writes about - and I think there are some writers who do that - but that hasn't happened to me. I do think it's dangerous because then you write the article to please them, which is a terrible error.
~Nora Ephron
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Everybody dies. There's no avoiding it, and I do not believe for one second that butter is the cause of anyone's death. Overeating may be, but not butter, please. I just feel bad for people who make that mistake.
~Nora Ephron
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As far as the men who are running for president are concerned, they aren't even people I would date.
~Nora Ephron
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The truth is that most marriages have food as a major player in them, and certainly mine does.
~Nora Ephron
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I go through periods where I work a great deal at all hours of the day whenever I am around a typewriter, and then I go through spells where I don't do anything. I just sort of have lunch - all day. I never have been able to stick to a schedule. I work when there is something due or when I am really excited about a piece.
~Nora Ephron
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Oh, how I regret not having worn a bikini for the entire year I was 26. If anyone young is reading this, go, right this minute, put on a bikini, and don't take it off until you're 34.
~Nora Ephron
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I feel really bad for people who aren't insane over food.
~Nora Ephron
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I grew up with fantastic Southern food. In Southern California.
~Nora Ephron
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The desire to get married, which - I regret to say, I believe is basic and primal in women - is followed almost immediately by an equally basic and primal urge - which is to be single again.
~Nora Ephron
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I was alive during the women's lib movement, and I do not remember anyone taking a position against cooking. I think they were talking about other things.
~Nora Ephron
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Here are some questions I am constantly fretting over: Do you splurge, or do you hoard? Do you live every day as if it's your last, or do you save your money on the chance you'll live 20 more years? Is life too short, or is it going to be too long?
~Nora Ephron
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My mother wanted us to understand that the tragedies of your life one day have the potential to be comic stories the next.
~Nora Ephron
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I have been forgetting things for years - at least since I was in my 30s. I know this because I wrote something about it at the time; I have proof. Of course I can't remember exactly where I wrote about it or when, but I could probably hunt it up if I had to.
~Nora Ephron
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What will happen to sex after liberation? Frankly, I don't know. It is a great mystery to all of us.
~Nora Ephron
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I don't care who you are. When you sit down to write the first page of your screenplay, in your head, you're also writing your Oscar acceptance speech.
~Nora Ephron
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Summer bachelors, like summer breezes, are never as cool as they pretend to be.
~Nora Ephron
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The one thing my mother did make was what was known at the time as lox and onions and eggs. Now, no one makes it with lox; they make it with nova. That was my mother's specialty, which she cooked on New Year's Day for the Rose Bowl games, which we had a party for every year. It took her about an hour to make scrambled eggs.
~Nora Ephron
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One of the best things about directing movies, as opposed to merely writing them, is that there's no confusion about who's to blame: you are.
~Nora Ephron
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Everything matches black, especially black.
~Nora Ephron
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'Sleepless' was a script that had been written by three or four other writers before me, and it never really worked, but it had this amazing ending on the top of the Empire State Building that just worked, no matter what came before it.
~Nora Ephron
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One good thing I'd like to say about divorce is that it sometimes makes it possible for you to be a much better wife to your next husband because you have a place for your anger - it's not directed at the person you're currently with.
~Nora Ephron
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With any child entering adolescence, one hunts for signs of health, is desperate for the smallest indication that the child's problems will never be important enough for a television movie.
~Nora Ephron
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I try to write parts for women that are as complicated and interesting as women actually are.
~Nora Ephron
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We're saved somewhat by Google. You can - when you're all sitting around the table desperately snapping your fingers in the hopes of remembering the name of that movie that you can't remember the name of - you can make people think that you are not as old as you actually are because you have the technology to find the answer.
~Nora Ephron
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Denial has been a way of life for me for many years. I actually believe in denial.
~Nora Ephron
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