Home > Author > Nora Ephron
1 " I love that you get cold when it's 71 degrees out. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you're looking at me like I'm nuts. I love that after I spend the day with you, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes. And I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it's not because I'm lonely, and it's not because it's New Year's Eve. I came here tonight because 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 , When Harry Met Sally
2 " I have made a lot of mistakes falling in love, and regrettedmost of them, but never the potatoes that went with them. "
― Nora Ephron
3 " 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. "
4 " When your children are teenagers, it's important to have a dog so that someone in the house is happy to see you. "
― Nora Ephron , I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman
5 " It's always hard to remember love - years pass and you say to yourself, Was I really in love, or was I just kidding myself? Was I really in love, or was I just pretending he was the man of my dreams? Was I really in love, or was I just desperate? "
6 " My marriage to him was as willful an act as I have ever committed; I married him against all the evidence. I married him believing that marriage doesn't work, that love dies, that passion fades, and in so doing I became the kind of romantic only a cynic is truly capable of being. "
― Nora Ephron , Heartburn
7 " Harry Burns: You realize of course that we could never be friends. Sally Albright: Why not? Harry Burns: What I'm saying is - and this is not a come-on in any way, shape or form - is that men and women can't be friends because the sex part always gets in the way. Sally Albright: That's not true. I have a number of men friends and there is no sex involved. Harry Burns: No you don't. Sally Albright: Yes I do. Harry Burns: No you don't. Sally Albright: Yes I do. Harry Burns: You only think you do. Sally Albright: You say I'm having sex with these men without my knowledge? Harry Burns: No, what I'm saying is they all WANT to have sex with you. Sally Albright: They do not. Harry Burns: Do too. Sally Albright: They do not. Harry Burns: Do too. Sally Albright: How do you know? Harry Burns: Because no man can be friends with a woman that he finds attractive. He always wants to have sex with her. Sally Albright: So, you're saying that a man can be friends with a woman he finds unattractive? Harry Burns: No. You pretty much want to nail 'em too. Sally Albright: What if THEY don't want to have sex with YOU? Harry Burns: Doesn't matter because the sex thing is already out there so the friendship is ultimately doomed and that is the end of the story. Sally Albright: Well, I guess we're not going to be friends then. Harry Burns: I guess not. Sally Albright: That's too bad. You were the only person I knew in New York. "
8 " As Harry puts it, men and women can never be friends because 'the sex part always gets in the way. "
9 " Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim. "
10 " The desire to get married is a basic and primal instinct in women. It's followed by another basic and primal instinct: the desire to be single again. "
11 " There's a reason why forty, fifty, and sixty don't look the way they used to, and it's not because of feminism, or better living through exercise. It's because of hair dye. In the 1950's only 7 percent of American women dyed their hair; today there are parts of Manhattan and Los Angeles where there are no gray-haired women at all. "
12 " Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it's a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it's a way of making contact with someone else's imagination after a day that's all too real. "
13 " Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel like I've accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. Reading makes me smarter. Reading gives me something to talk about later on. Reading is the unbelievably healthy way my attention deficit disorder medicates itself. Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it's a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it's a way of making contact with someone else's imagination after a day that's all too real. Reading is grist. Reading is bliss. "
14 " Every so often I would look at my women friends who were happily married and didn't cook, and I would always find myself wondering how they did it. Would anyone love me if I couldn't cook? I always thought cooking was part of the package: Step right up, it's Rachel Samstat, she's bright, she's funny and she can cook! "
15 " I remember thinking that no one had ever told me how much I would love my child; now, of course, I realized something else no one tells you: that a child is a grenade. When you have a baby, you set off an explosion in your marriage, and when the dust settles, your marriage is different from what it was. "
16 " My religion is Get Over It. "
― Nora Ephron , I Remember Nothing: and Other Reflections
17 " I want to talk to her. I want to have lunch with her. I want her to give me a book she just read and loved. She is my phantom limb, and I just can’t believe I’m here without her.”- on losing her best friend "
18 " Summer bachelors like summer breezes, are never as cool as they pretend to be. "
19 " Failure, they say, is a growth experience; you learn from failure. I wish that were true. It seems to me the main thing you learn from failure is that it's entirely possible you will have another failure. "
20 " Oh, how I regret not having worn a bikini for the entire year I was twenty-six. If anyone young is reading this, go, right this minute, put on a bikini, and don't take it off until you're thirty-four. "
