Top 251 Quotes & Sayings by Nora Ephron
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American author Nora Ephron.
Last updated on December 23, 2024.
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.
'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.
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.
I just bring a black turtleneck sweater everywhere - it's the greatest purchase of my life. Period.
At the age of 55, you will get a saggy roll just above your waist, even if you are painfully thin.
Insane people are always sure that they are fine. It is only the sane people who are willing to admit that they are crazy.
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.
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?
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.
I feel really bad for people who aren't insane over food.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I use those medical gloves that fit very tightly and are disposable for all chopping - peppers, onions, garlic, etc. Very Lady Macbeth, I think.
Whenever I get married, I start buying Gourmet magazine.
I grew up with fantastic Southern food. In Southern California.
In my sex fantasy, nobody ever loves me for my mind.
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.
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.
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.
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.
If pregnancy were a book they would cut the last two chapters.
Everyone loves fried chicken, Don't ever make it. Ever. Buy it from a place that makes good fried chicken.
I just want to go on making movies, and some of them will be completely meaningless, except, of course, to me.
I am continually fascinated at the difficulty intelligent people have in distinguishing what is controversial from what is merely offensive.
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.
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.
I try to write parts for women that are as complicated and interesting as women actually are.
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.
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.
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.
Washington is a city of important men and the women they married before they grew up.
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.
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.
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.
What will happen to sex after liberation? Frankly, I don't know. It is a great mystery to all of us.
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.
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.
The truth is that most marriages have food as a major player in them, and certainly mine does.
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?'
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.
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.
My mother wanted us to understand that the tragedies of your life one day have the potential to be comic stories the next.
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.
I don't think any day is worth living without thinking about what you're going to eat next at all times.
What my mother believed about cooking is that if you worked hard and prospered, someone else would do it for you.
Summer bachelors, like summer breezes, are never as cool as they pretend to be.
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.
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?'
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.
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.
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.
Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.
As far as the men who are running for president are concerned, they aren't even people I would date.
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.
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.
Denial has been a way of life for me for many years. I actually believe in denial.
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