01c. 1976 ADI had no jealousy of work, no jealousy of money. I was just jealous of women who took advantage of men, because I didn't know how to do it.Nora Ephron / quote ↗
02c. 1976 ADI wanted more than anything to be something I will never be - feminine, and feminine in the worst way. Submissive. Dependent. Soft spoken. Coquettish. I was no good at all at any of it, no good at being a girl; on the other hand, I am not half bad at being a woman.Nora Ephron / quote ↗
03c. 1976 ADThe point (I was starting to realize) was about putting it together. The point was making people feel at home, about finding your own style, whatever it was, and committing to it. The point was about giving up neurosis where food was concerned. The point was about finding a way that food fit into your life.Nora Ephron / quote ↗
04c. 1976 ADHere's the thing about dessert--you want it to last. You want to savor it.Nora Ephron / quote ↗
05c. 1976 ADMy parents had drinks and there were crudités for us- although they were not called crudités at the time, they were called carrots and celery.Nora Ephron / quote ↗
06c. 1976 ADThe truth is, most of the genuinely tragic episodes of lost food are things that are somewhat outside the reach of the home cook, even a home cook like me who has been known to overreach from time to time.Nora Ephron / quote ↗
07c. 1976 ADSometimes I believe that love dies but hope springs eternal. Sometimes I believe that hope dies but love springs eternal. Sometimes I believe that sex plus guilt equals love, and sometimes I believe that sex plus guilt equals good sex. Sometimes I believe that love is as natural as the tides, and sometimes I believe that love is an act of will. Sometimes I believe that some people are better at love than others, and sometimes I believe that everyone is faking it. Sometimes I believe that love is essential, and sometimes I believe that only reason love is essential is that otherwise you spend all your time looking for it.Nora Ephron / quote ↗
08c. 1976 ADI love trash. I have never believed that kitsch kills. I tell you this, so you will understand that my antipathy toward 'Love Story' is not because I am immune to either sentimentality or garbage, two qualities the book possesses in abundance. When I read 'Love Story', and I cried, in much the same way that I cry from onions, involuntarily and with great irritation, I was deeply offended...Nora Ephron / quote ↗
09c. 1976 ADEverybody dies. There’s nothing you can do about it. Whether or not you eat six almonds a day. Whether or not you believe in God. (Although there’s no question a belief in God would come in handy. It would be great to think there’s a plan, and that everything happens for a reason. I don’t happen to believe that. And every time one of my friends says to me, “Everything happens for a reason,” I would like to smack her.)Nora Ephron / quote ↗
10c. 1976 ADWriters are cannibals. They really are. They are predators, and if you are friends with them, and if you say anything funny at dinner, or if anything good happens to you, you are in big trouble.Nora Ephron / quote ↗
11c. 1976 ADIn these days of physical fitness, hair dye, and plastic surgery, you can live much of your life without feeling or even looking old. But then one day, your knee goes, or your shoulder, or your back, or your hip. Your hot flashes come to an end; things droop. Spots appear. Your cleavage looks like a peach pit. If your elbows faced forward, you would kill yourself. You’re two inches shorter than you used to be. You’re ten pounds fatter and you cannot lose a pound of it to save your soul. Your hands don’t work as well as they once did and you can’t open bottles, jars, wrappers, and especially those gadgets that are encased tightly in what seems to be molded Mylar. If you were stranded on a desert island and your food were sealed in plastic packaging, you would starve to death. You take so many pills in the morning you don’t have room for breakfast.You lose close friends and discover one of the worst truths of old age: they’re irreplaceable. People who run four miles a day and eat only nuts and berries drop dead. People who drink a quart of whiskey and smoke two packs of cigarettes a day drop dead. You are suddenly in a lottery, the ultimate game of chance, and someday your luck will run out. Everybody dies. There’s nothing you can do about it. Whether or not you eat six almonds a day. Whether or not you believe in God.Nora Ephron / quote ↗
12c. 1976 ADThat's the catch about betrayal, of course: that it feels good, that there's something immensely pleasurable about moving from a complicated relationship which involves minor atrocities on both sides to a nice, neat, simple one where one person has done something so horrible and unforgivable that the other person is immediately absolved of all the low-grade sins of sloth, envy, gluttony, avarice and I forget the other three.Nora Ephron / quote ↗
13c. 1976 ADThe divorce has lasted way longer than the marriage, but finally it's over.Enough about that.The point is that for a long time, the fact that I was divorced was the most important thing about me.And now it's not.Nora Ephron / quote ↗
14c. 1976 AD. . .once you find out he's cheated on you, you have to keep finding out, over and over and over again, until you've degraded yourself so completely that there's nothing left to do but walk out.Nora Ephron / quote ↗
15c. 1976 ADBut 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 / quote ↗
16c. 1976 ADBut the truth is you don't always know you're getting a divorce. For years, you're married. Then, one day, the concept of divorce enters your head. It sits there for a while. You lean toward it and then you lean away. You make lists. You calculate how much it will cost. You tote up grievances, and pluses and minuses.Nora Ephron / quote ↗
17c. 1976 ADPeople always say that once it goes away, you forget the pain. It’s a cliché of childbirth: you forget the pain. I don’t happen to agree. I remember the pain. What you really forget is love. Divorce seems as if it will last forever, and then suddenly, one day, your children grow up, move out, and make lives for themselves, and except for an occasional flare, you have no contact at all with your ex-husband. The divorce has lasted way longer than the marriage, but finally it’s over.Nora Ephron / quote ↗
18c. 1976 ADBut the main problem with our marriages was not that our husbands wouldn’t share the housework but that we were unbelievably irritable young women and our husbands irritated us unbelievably. - The D WordNora Ephron / quote ↗
19c. 1976 ADBlack makes your life so much simpler. Everything matches black, especially black.Nora Ephron / quote ↗
20c. 1976 ADDon'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.Nora Ephron / quote ↗
21c. 1976 ADI look out the window and I see the lights and the skyline and the people on the street rushing around looking for action, love, and the world's greatest chocolate chip cookie, and my heart does a little dance.Nora Ephron / quote ↗
22c. 1976 ADI'd known since I was a child that I was going to live in New York eventually, and that everything in between would just be an intermission. I'd spent all those years imagining what New York was going to be like. I thought it was going to be the most exciting, magical, fraught-with-possibility place that you could ever live; a place where if you really wanted something you might be able to get it; a place where I'd be surrounded by people I was dying to know; a place where I might be able to become the only thing worth being, a journalist. And I'd turned out to be right.Nora Ephron / quote ↗
23c. 1976 ADIt was personal to me." ~Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) in You've Got MailNora Ephron / quote ↗
24c. 1976 ADThe image of the journalist as wallflower at the orgy has been replaced by the journalist as the life of the party.Nora Ephron / quote ↗
