Nora Ephron Quotes

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.

Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.

I am continually fascinated at the difficulty intelligent people have in distinguishing what is controversial from what is merely offensive.

Summer bachelors, like summer breezes, are never as cool as they pretend to be.

If pregnancy were a book they would cut the last two chapters.

My mother wanted us to understand that the tragedies of your life one day have the potential to be comic stories the next.

Some people pretend to like capers, but the truth is that any dish that tastes good with capers in it tastes even better with capers not in it.

Marriages come and go, but divorce is forever.

That [photographs] disturb readers is exactly as it should be: that's why photojournalism is often more powerful than written journalism.

If you're looking for monogamy, you'd better marry a swan.

When your children are teenagers, it's important to have a dog so that someone in the house is happy to see you.

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.

Sometimes I believe that some people are better at love than others, and sometimes I believe that everyone is faking it.

Don't you love New York in the fall? It makes me want to buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address.

I don't think any day is worth living without thinking about what you're going to eat next at all times.

You can settle for reality, or you can go off, like a fool, and dream another dream.

The major concrete achievement of the women's movement of the 1970's was the Dutch treat.

I try to write parts for women that are as complicated and interesting as women actually are.

We have lived through the era when happiness was a warm puppy, and the era when happiness was a dry martini, and now we have come to the era when happiness is 'knowing what your uterus looks like'.

Insane people are always sure they're just fine. It's only the sane people who are willing to admit they're crazy.

I always say that a successful parent is one who raises a child so that they can pay for their own psychoanalysis.

I think if you're lucky enough to find a voice in whatever you do, that voice will come sneaking out no matter what.

New Orleans is one of the two most ingrown, self-obsessed little cities in the United States. (The other is San Francisco.)

You enter into a certain amount of madness when you marry a person with pets.

And don't be frightened: you can always change your mind. I know: I've had four careers and three husbands.

I have made a lot of mistakes falling in love, and regretted most of them, but never the potatoes that went with them.

The hardest thing about writing is writing.

It's so interesting that we think we know the rules to this game, this total hypothetical game called, "Would you," "If you had it to do over." It's not out there.

Most of us live our lives devoid of cinematic moments.

Reading makes me feel I've accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. ... Reading is bliss.

And then the dreams break into a million tiny pieces. The dream dies. Which leaves you with a choice: you can settle for reality, or you can go off, like a fool, and dream another dream.

The only way to learn is to keep doing something new, and, if you're lucky, learning with people who really know how to do it.

When I buy a new book, I always read the last page first, that way in case I die before I finish, I know how it ends. That, my friend, is a dark side.

One of the few advantages to not being beautiful is that one usually gets better-looking as one gets older. I am, in fact, at this very moment gaining my looks.

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.

I have a theory that children remember two things-when you weren't there and when they threw up.

Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape.

What I love about cooking is that after a hard day, there is something comforting about the fact that if you melt butter and add flour and then hot stock, it will get thick!

Your education is a dress rehearsal for a life that is yours to lead.

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.

Whenever I get married, I start buying Gourmet magazine.

Lesbianism has always seemed to me an extremely inventive response to a shortage of men, but otherwise not worth the trouble.

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.

The big cities of America are becoming Third World countries.

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.

Too few journalists become screenwriters. I say to all the would-be screenwriters: Become journalists. And I’ll say to working journalists: Do not stay journalists. Become screenwriters.

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.

There is no reason to confuse television news with journalism.

Parenting meant that whether or not your children understood you, your obligation was to understand them.

I'm very much a believer in knowing what it is that you love doing so you can do a great deal of it.