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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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I Don't Care Who

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.

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You Enter Into A Certain Amount Of Madness When You Marry A Person With Pets.

The Wonderbra Is Not A Step Forward For Women. Nothing That Hurts That Much Is A Step Forward For Women.

Vera Said: 'why Do You Feel You Have To Turn Everything Into A Story?' So I Told Her Why: Because If I Tell The Story, I Control The Version. Because If I Tell The Story, I Can Make You Laugh, And I Would Rather Have You Laugh At Me Than Feel Sorry For Me. Because If I Tell The Story, It Doesn't Hurt As Much. Because If I Tell The Story, I Can Get On With It.

I Am Still Amazed At The Amount Of Christian Charity [wellesley] Stuck Us All With, A Kind Of Glazed Politeness In The Face Of Boredom And Stupidity. Tolerance, In The Worst Sense Of The Word. How Marvelous It Would Have Been To Go To A Women's College That Encouraged Impoliteness, That Rewarded Aggression, That Encouraged Argument.

We All Look Good For Our Age. Except For Our Necks.

I Think You Often Have That Sense When You Write--that If You Can Spot Something In Yourself And Set It Down On Paper, You're Free Of It. And You're Not, Of Course; You've Just Managed To Set It Down On Paper, That's All.

One Of The Great Things About Movies Is That It's Just That Short Period Of Time. It's A Bubble. The Last Thing You Want To Know Is That Elizabeth And Darcy Had A Fight Over How To Treat The Servants!

I Recognize That Printing Pictures Of Corpses Raises All Sorts Of Problems About Taste And Titillation And Sensationalism; The Fact Is, However, That People Die. Death Happens To Be One Of Life's Main Events. And It Is Irresponsible And More Than That, Inaccurate, For Newspapers To Fail To Show It.

Verbal Ability Is A Highly Overrated Thing In A Guy, And It's Our Pathetic Need For It That Gets Us Into So Much Trouble.

Everybody I Know Who Goes Out And Plays A Little Softball, They Break Their Leg.

No Man Can Be Friends With A Woman He Finds Attractive. He Always Wants To Have Sex With Her. Sex Is Always Out There. Friendship Is Ultimately Doomed And That Is The End Of The Story.

Women Are Being Considered As Candidates For Vice-president Of The United States Because It Is The Worst Job In America. It's Amazing That Men Will Take It. A Job With Real Power Is First Lady. I'd Be Willing To Run For That. As Far As The Men Who Are Running For President Are Concerned, They Aren't Even People I Would Date.

Plastic Surgery Is A Way For People To Buy Themselves A Few Years Before They Have To Truly Confront What Ageing Is, Which Of Course Is Not That Your Looks Are Falling Apart, But That You Are Falling Apart And Some-day You Will Have Fallen Apart And Ceased To Exist.

There Are Plenty Of Men Who Philander During The Summer, To Be Sure, But They Are Usually The Same Lot Who Philander During The Winter - Albeit With Less Convenience.

The Empty Nest Is Underrated.

To State The Obvious, Romantic Comedies Have To Be Funny And They Have To Be Romantic. But One Of The Most Important Things, For Me Anyway, Is That They Be About Two Strong People Finding Their Way To Love.

You Can Blame Al Gore And You Can Blame Ralph Nader And You Can Blame George Bush, But I Blame Bill [clinton]. I Just Do. I Just Think He Squandered His Presidency The Night That Woman Delivered That Pizza To Him, And If He Hadn't, We Wouldn't Be Where We Are And There Would Be A Lot Of People Who Are Alive Today Who Aren't.

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!

Washington Is A City Of Locker-room Boys, And All The Old, Outmoded Notions Apply: Men And Women Are Ushered To Separate Rooms After Dinner, Sex Is Dirty, And They Are Still Serving Onion-soup Dip.

Black Makes Your Life So Much Simpler. Everything Matches Black, Especially Black.

Food Is One Of My Favourite Things. Though I Certainly Know Lots Of People Who Happen To Be Happily Married Who Don't Have Food Play The Role In It That It Plays In My Life. And I Don't Know How They Do It, And Frankly I Feel So Bad For Them Because I Just Love Food And One Of My Favourite Things Is Asking, "what Do We Want For Dinner? What Do We Feel Like Eating?" That Wonderful Negotiation That Goes On Several Times A Week About What "we" Feel Like.

I Try To Write Parts For Women That Are As Complicated And Interesting As Women Actually Are.

So, Twice A Week, I Go To A Beauty Salon And Have My Hair Blown Dry. It’s Cheaper By Far Than Psychoanalysis, And Much More Uplifting.

That's Your Problem! You Don't Want To Be In Love. You Want To Be In Love In A Movie.

No One Is More Romantic Than A Cynic. I Do Think That You Don't Become Cynical Or 'unsentimental' Unless There's A Core Of Romanticism Or Sentiment That's Had A Few Chips Nicked Into It.

I've Always Felt That One Of The Mistakes People Make Is That They Try To Do Something That Is Just Slightly Beyond Their Skill Set, And Then Feel They've Failed.

I Definitely Divide My Life Into Decades. Almost Every Ten Years, Something In My Work Life Has Changed. My Twenties Were My Journalistic Phase, Then There Was My Screenwriting Phase, Then I Became A Director, Then I Started Doing Some Plays.

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.

The Odd Thing About This Form Of Communication Is You're More Likely To Talk About Nothing Than Something. But I Just Want To Say That All This Nothing Has Meant More To Me Than So Many... Somethings. So, Thanks.

Marriages Come And Go, But Divorce Is Forever.

You Don't Really Have To Believe What You Write In A Blog For More Than The Moment When You're Writing It. You Don't Bring The Same Solemnity That You Would Bring To An Actual Essay.

The One Thing I Would Like To Get Across About My Whole Feeling Regarding High School Is How I Was When I Was Fifteen. Gawky. Always A Hem Hanging Down, Or Strap Loose, Or A Pimple On My Chin. I Never Knew What To Do With My Hair. I Was A Mess. And I Still Carry That Fifteen-year-old Girl Around Now. A Piece Of Me Still Believes I'm The Girl Nobody Dances With.

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.

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[on The Screenplay For "when Harry Met Sally"] It Struck Me That The Movies Had Spent More Than Half A Century Saying, "they Lived Happily Ever After" And The Following Quarter Century Warning That They'll Be Lucky To Make It Through The Weekend. Possibly Now We Are Now Entering A Third Era In Which The Movies Will Be Sounding A Note Of Cautious Optimism: You Know, It Just Might Work.

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.

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Everyone Always Asks, Was He Mad At You For Writing The Book? And I Have To Say, Yes, Yes, He Was. He Still Is. It Is One Of The Most Fascinating Things To Me About The Whole Episode: He Cheated On Me, And Then Got To Behave As If He Was The One Who Had Been Wronged Because I Wrote About It! I Mean, It's Not As If I Wasn't A Writer. It's Not As If I Hadn't Often Written About Myself. I'd Even Written About Him. What Did He Think Was Going To Happen? That I Would Take A Vow Of Silence For The First Time In My Life? "

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. (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.)

Everything Happens For A Reason

There Is Something Called The Rapture Of The Deep, And It Refers To What Happens When A Deep-sea Diver Spends Too Much Time At The Bottom Of The Ocean And Can't Tell Which Way Is Up. When He Surfaces, He's Liable To Have A Condition Called The Bends, Where The Body Can't Adapt To The Oxygen Levels In The Atmosphere. All Of This Happens To Me When I Surface From A Great Book.

[wellesley College] Is About As Meaningful To The Educational Process In America As A Perfume Factory Is To The National Economy.

I'm Not One Of Those People Who Think You Should Go Grey And That There Is Some Virtue In Looking Wrinkly If You Don't Feel Like It. If You Do, Great. If You Don't, Just My Only Caution Is Watch Out. There Are A Huge Number Of Wrinkle Creams That Do Nothing For You.

If You're Looking For Monogamy, You'd Better Marry A Swan.

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.

It's Much Easier To Get Over Someone If You Can Delude Yourself Into Thinking You Never Really Cared That Much.

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.

I Have No Desire To Be Dominated. Honestly I Don't. And Yet I Find Myself Becoming Angry When I'm Not.

Look At The Parts The Oscar-nominated Actresses Played This Year: Hooker, Hooker, Hooker, Hooker, And Nun.

American Society Has A Remarkable Ability To Resist Change, Or To Take Whatever Change Has Taken Place And Attempt To Make It Go Away.

I'm Very Much A Believer In Knowing What It Is That You Love Doing So You Can Do A Great Deal Of It.

Success Comes And Goes. Your Flops Stay With You For Life.

You Can't Call Yourself A Feminist If You Don't Believe In The Right To Abortion.

My Mother Wanted Us To Understand That The Tragedies Of Your Life One Day Have The Potential To Be Comic Stories The Next.

Working As A Journalist Is Exactly Like Being The Wallflower At An Orgy. I Always Seem To Find Myself At A Perfectly Wonderful Event Where Everyone Else Is Having A Marvelous Time, Laughing Merrily, Eating, Drinking, Having Sex In The Back Room, And I Am Standing On The Side Taking Notes On It All.

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.

Let's Face It: Part Of Being A Grownup Is That Every Day You Have To Choose Between Going Out At Night Or Staying Home, And It Is One Of Life's Unhappy Truths That There Is Not Enough Time To Do Both.

You Can't Meet Someone Until You Become What You're Becoming.

Lesbianism Has Always Seemed To Me An Extremely Inventive Response To A Shortage Of Men, But Otherwise Not Worth The Trouble.

That's Another Thing About Being A Certain Age That I've Noticed: I Try As Much As Possible Not To Look In The Mirror.

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. I Know Exactly Where I'm Going As Soon As I Have The Lead.

Maintenance Is What You Have To Do Just So You Can Walk Out The Door Knowing That If You Go To The Market And Bump Into A Guy Who Once Rejected You, You Won't Have To Hide Behind A Stack Of Canned Food. I Don't Mean To Be Too Literal About This.

What Failure Ofimagination Had Caused Me To Forget That Life Was Full Of Other Possiblities, Including The Possibility That Eventually I Would Fall In Love Again?

Falling In Love

I'll Have What She's Having

When Your Children Are Teenagers, It's Important To Have A Dog So That Someone In The House Is Happy To See You.

When I Was Young, I Had A List Of Things That I Wanted In A Husband. I Knew What He Should Read And What Sports He Should Like And Blah, Blah, Blah. But The Truth Is, That The List Was A Shocking Mirror Image Of Me. You Want To Marry Yourself When You Are Young. All The Things You Think Are So Urgently Important, When You Get Older, You Discover They Don't Have Anything To Do With Love.

You Can Settle For Reality, Or You Can Go Off, Like A Fool, And Dream Another Dream.

Suddenly, One Day, There Was This Thing Called Parenting. Parenting Was Serious. Parenting Was Fierce. Parenting Was Solemn. Parenting Was A Participle, Like Going And Doing And Crusading And Worrying.

When You're Attracted To Someone, It Just Means That Your Subconscious Is Attracted To Their Subconscious, Subconsciously. So What We Think Of As Fate Is Just Two Neuroses Knowing That They Are A Perfect Match. - Sleepless In Seattle

I Am Not A New Journalist, Whatever That Is. I Just Sit Here At The Typewriter And Bang Away At The Old Forms.

You're Born, You Die. Everything In Between Is Subject To Interpretation.

Never Marry A Man You Wouldn't Want To Be Divorced From.

Funny Relationship

I Always Say That A Successful Parent Is One Who Raises A Child So That They Can Pay For Their Own Psychoanalysis.

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.

If Pregnancy Were A Book They Would Cut The Last Two Chapters.

You Can't Retrieve You Life (unless You're On Wikipedia, In Which Case You Can Retrieve An Inaccurate Version Of It).

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.

Having Been Married So Many Times, I Know That One Of The Few Things I Am An Expert In Is Falling In Love.

Falling In Love

Most Directors, I Discovered, Need To Be Convinced That The Screenplay They're Going To Direct Has Something To Do With Them. And This Is A Tricky Thing If You Write Screenplays Where Women Have Parts That Are Equal To Or Greater Than The Male Part. And I Thought, 'why Am I Out There Looking For Directors?'—because You Look At A List Of Directors, It's All Boys. It Certainly Was When I Started As A Screenwriter. So I Thought, 'i'm Just Gonna Become A Director And That'll Make It Easier.'

From The Essay "twenty-five Things People Have A Shocking Capacity To Be Surprised By Over And Over Again" 1. Journalists Sometimes Make Things Up. 2. Journalists Sometimes Get Things Wrong. 3. Almost All Books That Are Published As Memoirs Were Initially Written As Novels, And Then The Agent/editor Said, This Might Work Better As A Memoir. 6. Freedom Of The Press Belongs To The Man Who Owns One.

I Have A Theory That Children Remember Two Things-when You Weren't There And When They Threw Up.

I Am Living In The Google Years, No Question Of That. And There Are Advantages To It. When You Forget Something, You Can Whip Out Your Iphone And Go To Google. The Senior Moment Has Become The Google Moment, And It Has A Much Nicer, Hipper, Younger, More Contemporary Sound, Doesn't It? By Handling The Obligations Of The Search Mechanism, You Almost Prove You Can Keep Up.... You Can't Retrieve You Life (unless You're On Wikipedia, In Which Case You Can Retrieve An Inaccurate Version Of It).

The Last Four Years Of Psychoanalysis Are A Waste Of Money.

Here Are Some Questions I Am Constantly Noodling 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 Twenty More Years? Is Life Too Short, Or Is It Going To Be Too Long? Do You Work As Hard As You Can, Or Do You Slow Down To Smell The Roses? And Where Do Carbohydrates Fit Into All This? Are We Really All Going To Spend Our Last Years Avoiding Bread, Especially Now That Bread In American Is So Unbelievable Delicious? And What About Chocolate?

Consciousness-raising Is At The Very Least Supposed To Bring About An Intimacy, But What It Seems Instead To Bring About Are The Trappings Of Intimacy, The Illusion Of Intimacy, A Semblance Of Intimacy.

As Far As The Men Who Are Running For President Are Concerned, They Aren't Even People I Would Date.

I Married Him Against All 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.

Food Became, For Dinner Parties In The Sixties, What Abstract Expressionism Had Been In The Fifties.

The Big Cities Of America Are Becoming Third World Countries.

I’m Really Not Interested In Women As Victims. Look At Me, I Get The Last Laugh ‘cause I Get To Be Funny About It.

That [photographs] Disturb Readers Is Exactly As It Should Be: That's Why Photojournalism Is Often More Powerful Than Written Journalism.

And Don't Be Frightened: You Can Always Change Your Mind. I Know: I've Had Four Careers And Three Husbands.

If Sigmund Freud Had Watched Phil Donahue He Would Never Have Wondered What Women Want.

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.

Believe Me, If I Looked Good, It's Not An Accident.

These Days Most Women Have Jobs That Last Way Too Long. A Lot Of People In New York Barely Have Time To Get Laid.

When Something Like This Happens, You Suddenly Have No Sense Of Reality At All. You Have Lost A Piece Of Your Past. The Infidelity Itself Is Small Potatoes Compared To The Low-level Brain Damage That Results When A Whole Chunk Of Your Life Turns Out To Have Been Completely Different From What You Thought It Was. It Becomes Impossible To Look Back At Anything That's Happened ... Without Wondering What Was Really Going On.

I Look As Young As A Person Can Look Given How Old I Am.

[i] Had Gotten To The Point Where I Simply Could Not Make A Bad Vinaigrette, This Was Not Exactly The Stuff Of Drama. (even Now, I Cannot Believe Mark Would Want To Risk Losing That Vinaigrette. You Just Don't Bump Into Vinaigrettes That Good.)

I Think If You're Lucky Enough To Find A Voice In Whatever You Do, That Voice Will Come Sneaking Out No Matter What.

The Senior Moment Has Become The Google Moment, And It Has A Much Nicer, Hipper, Younger, More Contemporary Sound, Doesn't It? By Handling The Obligations Of The Search Mechanism, You Almost Prove You Can Keep Up.

New Orleans Is One Of The Two Most Ingrown, Self-obsessed Little Cities In The United States. (the Other Is San Francisco.)

Well, I'm Gonna Get Out Of Bed Every Morning... Breathe In And Out All Day Long. Then, After A While I Won't Have To Remind Myself To Get Out Of Bed Every Morning And Breathe In And Out... And, Then After A While, I Won't Have To Think About How I Had It Great And Perfect For A While. - Sleepless In Seattle

Working As A Journalist Is Exactly Like Being A Wallflower At An Orgy.

The Image Of The Journalist As Wallflower At The Orgy Has Been Replaced By The Journalist As The Life Of The Party.

The Hardest Thing About Writing Is Writing.

Whenever Someone Says The Words 'our Friendship Is More Important Than This,' Watch Out, Because It Almost Never Is.

Summer Bachelors, Like Summer Breezes, Are Never As Cool As They Pretend To Be.

Why Do People Write Books That Say It's Better To Be Older Than To Be Younger? It's Not Better. Even If You Have All Your Marbles, You're Constantly Reaching For The Name Of The Person You Met The Day Before Yesterday.

If Pregnancy Were A Book, They Would Cut The Last Two Chapters. The Beginning Is Glorious, Especially If You're Lucky Enough Not To Have Morning Sickness And If, Like Me, You've Had Small Breasts All Your Life. Suddenly They Begin To Grow, And You've Got Them, You've Really Got Them, Breasts, Darling Breasts, And When You Walk Down The Street They Bounce, Truly They Do, They Bounce Bounce Bounce.

The Function Of A Blog Is On Some Level To Start A Conversation That You're Not Involved In Any More Because You've Already Had Your Say. That Thing Of Coming Right Off The News - Did You See What I Saw This Morning, Can You Believe It? - Has A Kind Of Fun Appeal.

I 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.

Reading Is Escape, And The Opposite Of Escape.

If There Is A Nora Ephron Signature Anything It Is That There's Slightly Too Much Food. I Have A Friend Whose Mantra Is: You Must Choose. And I Believe The Exact Opposite: I Think You Should Always Have At Least Four Desserts That Are Kind Of Fighting With Each Other.

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.

Another Thing You End Up Doing When You Get Older, Is You Spend So Much Time Sort Of Trying Desperately To Keep From Just Looking Just A Little Older. You're Just Constantly Putting Stuff On Your Face And Having Things Removed From Yourself And Opening Up Copies Of "vogue" So That You Can Find New Ways To Throw Whatever Money You've Managed To Save Into The Arms Of Some Doctor Who Has Just Come Up With A New Way Of Lasering Your Face That Feels Like Electroshock And All These Things.

In My Sex Fantasy, Nobody Ever Loves Me For My Mind.

... The State Of Rapture I Experience When I Read A Wonderful Book Is One Of The Main Reasons I Read; But It Doesn't Happen Every Time Or Even Every Other Time, And When It Does Happen, I Am Truly Beside Myself.

My Parents Were Screenwriters, And They Had Four Daughters And We All Write. So That's Amazing. Talk About Powerful Parents. My Mother Always Said To Us, "everything Is Copy."

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!

Well, It Was A Million Tiny Little Things That, When You Added Them All Up, They Meant We Were Supposed To Be Together... And I Knew It. I Knew It The Very First Time I Touched Her. It Was Like Coming Home... Only To No Home I'd Ever Known... I Was Just Taking Her Hand To Help Her Out Of A Car And I Knew. It Was Like... Magic. - Sleepless In Seattle

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. So I'm Very Much A Believer In Knowing What It Is That You Love Doing So You Can Do A Great Deal Of It.

I Live In New York City. I Could Never Live Anywhere Else. The Events Of September 11 Forced Me To Confront The Fact That No Matter What, I Live Here And Always Will. One Of My Favorite Things About New York Is That You Can Pick Up The Phone And Order Anything And Someone Will Deliver It To You. Once I Lived For A Year In Another City, And Almost Every Waking Hour Of My Life Was Spent Going To Stores, Buying Things, Loading Them Into The Car, Bringing Them Home, Unloading Them, And Carrying Them Into The House. How Anyone Gets Anything Done In These Places Is A Mystery To Me.

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.

Directing Movies

I Have For Many Years Been Puzzled By The Persistence Of Hugh Hefner. Why Is He Still Here?

The Major Concrete Achievement Of The Women's Movement Of The 1970's Was The Dutch Treat.

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?

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.

So Many Of The Conscious And Unconscious Ways Men And Women Treat Each Other Have To Do With Romantic And Sexual Fantasies That Are Deeply Ingrained, Not Just In Society But In Literature. The Women's Movement May Manage To Clean Up The Mess In Society, But I Don't Know Whether It Can Ever Clean Up The Mess In Our Minds.

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'.

A Man Who Finishes A Book Is Always Alone When He Finishes It.

I Cannot Understand Any Woman's Wanting To Be The First Woman To Do Anything. ... It Is A Devastating Burden And I Could Not Take It, Could Not Be A Pioneer, A Symbol Of Something Greater.

Insane People Are Always Sure They're Just Fine. It's Only The Sane People Who Are Willing To Admit They're Crazy.

People In New Orleans Really Care About Food, Care About It Passionately, Can Spend Hours Arguing Over Whether Antoine's Is Better Than Galatoire's Or The Other Way Around ... In New Orleans, There Is Basically Nothing To Do But Eat And Then Argue About It.

People Have Only One Way To Be.

A Lot Of College Graduates Approach Me About Becoming Screenwriters. I Tell Them, 'do Not Become A Screenwriter, Become A Journalist,' Because Journalists Go Into Worlds That Are Not Their Own. Kids Who Go To Hollywood Write Coming-of-age Stories For Their First Scripts, About What Happened To Them When They Were Sixteen. Then They Write The Summer Camp Script. At The Age Of Twenty-three They Haven't Produced Anything, And That's The End Of The Career.

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! It's A Sure Thing! It's A Sure Thing In A World Where Nothing Is Sure; It Has A Mathematical Certainty In A World Where Those Of Us Who Long For Some Kind Of Certainty Are Forced To Settle For Crossword Puzzles.

The Divorce Has Lasted Way Longer Than The Marriage, But Finally It's Over.

I've Just Surfaced From Spending Several Days In A State Of Rapture: I Was Reading A Book... I Felt Alive And Engaged And Positively Brilliant, Bursting With Ideas, Brimming With Memories Of Other Books I've Loved.

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.

In A Socialist Country You Can Get Rich By Providing Necessities, While In A Capitalist Country You Can Get Rich By Providing Luxuries.

Socialist Countries

…the Amount Of Maintenance Involving Hair Is Genuinely Overwhelming. Sometimes I Think That Not Having To Worry About Your Hair Anymore Is The Secret Upside Of Death.

I Have Made A Lot Of Mistakes Falling In Love, And Regretted Most Of Them, But Never The Potatoes That Went With Them.

All That Means Is That It Wasn't Personal To You. But It Was Personal To Me.

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

Eat Every Meal As If It's Your Last; When The Last One Comes, You Probably Won't Be Very Hungry.

The Realization That I May Have Only A Few Good Yeras 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 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.

Plastic Surgery Is One Of The Ways That People Deal With The Aging Process. And I Don't Mean By Using It As A Form Of Denial, But As A Kind Of Negotiation With It.

So Much Of What I See Reminds Me Of Something I Read In A Book, When Shouldn't It Be The Other Way Around?

Whatever You Choose, However Many Roads You Travel, I Hope That You Choose Not To Be A Lady. I Hope You Will Find Some Way To Break The Rules And Make A Little Trouble Out There. And I Also Hope That You Will Choose To Make Some Of That Trouble On Behalf Of Women.

I Know That I Am Essentially A Sort Of Fun-loving Person Who Really Just Wants To Sit Around And Eat Pies.

You Always Think That A Bolt Of Lightning Is Going To Strike And Your Parents Will Magically Change Into The People You Wish They Were, Or Back Into The People They Used To Be.

You Get To Be A Certain Age And You Start Reading Stuff About The Age You Are, And You Think, What Is Wrong With These People Who Are Writing These Books? Do They Not Have Necks?

Your Education Is A Dress Rehearsal For A Life That Is Yours To Lead.

I Don't Think Any Day Is Worth Living Without Thinking About What You're Going To Eat Next At All Times.

The Washington Press Corps Thinks That Julie Nixon Eisenhower Is The Only Member Of The Nixon Administration Who Has Any Credibility--and, As One Journalist Put It, This Is Not To Say That Anyone Believes What She Is Saying But Simply That People Believe She Believes What She Is Sayingit Is Almost As If She Is The Only Woman In America Over The Age Of Twenty Who Still Thinks Her Father Is Exactly What She Thought He Was When She Was Six.

Maybe Young Women Don't Wonder Whether They Can Have It All Any Longer, But In Case Any Of You Are Wondering, Of Course You Can Have It All. It Will Be A Little Messy, But Embrace The Mess. It Will Be Complicated, But Rejoice In The Complications. It Will Not Be Anything Like What You Think It Will Be Like, But Surprises Are Good For You. And Don't Be Frightened: You Can Always Change Your Mind. I Know: I've Had Four Careers And Three Husbands.

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.

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.

We Weren't Meant To Have Futures, We Were Meant To Marry Them. We Weren't Meant To Have Politics, Or Careers That Mattered, Or Opinions, Or Lives; We Were Meant To Marry Them. If You Wanted To Be An Architect, You Married An Architect.

My Closet Is Full Of Sad Little Scripts That Didn't Get Made That Have Sad Endings. It's Very Hard To Get A Movie Made That Has A Sad Ending.

Journalists Are Interesting. They Just Aren't As Interesting As The Things They Cover.

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 Am Continually Fascinated At The Difficulty Intelligent People Have In Distinguishing What Is Controversial From What Is Merely Offensive.

Take Notes. Everything Is Copy.

And So, Thanksgiving. Its The Most Amazing Holiday. Just Think About It — It's A Miracle That Once A Year So Many Millions Of Americans Sit Down To Exactly The Same Meal As One Another, Exactly The Same Meal They Grew Up Eating, And Exactly The Same Meal They Ate A Year Earlier. The Turkey. The Sweet Potatoes. The Stuffing. The Pumpkin Pie. Is There Anything Else We All Can Agree So Vehemently About? I Don't Think So.

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.

We Have A Game We Play When We’re Waiting For Tables In Restaurants, Where You Have To Write The Five Things That Describe Yourself On A Piece Of Paper. When I Was [in My Twenties], I Would Have Put: Ambitious, Wellesley Graduate, Daughter, Democrat, Single. Ten Years Later Not One Of Those Five Things Turned Up On My List. I Was: Journalist, Feminist, New Yorker, Divorced, Funny. Today Not One Of Those Five Things Turns Up In My List: Writer, Director, Mother, Sister, Happy.

I Don't Know Why So Much Nonsense About Age Is Written - Although I Can Certainly Understand That No One Really Wants To Read Anything That Says Aging Sucks.

What Will Happen To Sex After Liberation? Frankly, I Don't Know. It Is A Great Mystery To All Of Us.

Most Of Us Live Our Lives Devoid Of Cinematic Moments.

You Can Never Have Too Much Butter - That Is My Belief. If I Have A Religion, That's It.

I Don't Want To Be Someone That You're Settling For. I Don't Want To Be Someone That Anyone Settles For. Marriage Is Hard Enough Without Bringing Such Low Expectations Into It, Isn't It?

... When I Finish Reading People, I Always Feel That I Have Just Spent Four Days In Los Angeles. Women's Wear Daily At Least Makes Me Feel Dirty; People Makes Me Feel That I Haven't Read Or Learned Or Seen Anything At All.

Everybody Dies. There's Nothing You Can Do About It. Whether You Eat Six Almonds A Day. Whether Or Not You Believe In God.

I Am A Writer And A Feminist, And The Two Seem To Be Constantly In Conflict.... Ever Since I Became Loosely Involved With It, It Has Seemed To Me One Of The Recurring Ironies Of This Movement That There Is No Way To Tell The Truth About It Without, In Some Small Way, Seeming To Hurt It.

If Your Husband Is Cheating On You With A Carhop, Get Meryl Streep To Play You. You'll Feel Much Better.

Whenever I Get Married, I Start Buying Gourmet Magazine.

Parenting Meant That Whether Or Not Your Children Understood You, Your Obligation Was To Understand Them.

Getting Older Means You Don't Have To Shave Your Legs Anymore.

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. Not Better, Necessarily; Not Worse, Necessarily; But Different.

Sometimes I Wonder About My Life. I Lead A Small Life - Well, Valuable, But Small - And Sometimes I Wonder, Do I Do It Because I Like It, Or Because I Haven't Been Brave? So Much Of What I See Reminds Me Of Something I Read In A Book, When Shouldn't It Be The Other Way Around? I Don't Really Want An Answer. I Just Want To Send This Cosmic Question Out Into The Void. So Good Night, Dear Void. - You've Got Mail

There Is No Reason To Confuse Television News With Journalism.

Hollywood Is A Very Male Business, And It Has In Vast Portions Of It - The Whole Action Movie Part Of It Might As Well Be The United States Army In 1943 In That The Ethics Of It Are, You Know, Boot Camp And Action Movies And Guns And Explosions And All The Rest Of It, And That - So That Means That About 50% Of The Business Is Not Only Pretty Much Closed Off To Women, But Women Don't Even Wanna Be In It!

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.

Sometimes I Believe That Some People Are Better At Love Than Others, And Sometimes I Believe That Everyone Is Faking It.

One Of The Things People Always Say To You If You Get Upset Is, Don't Take It Personally, But Listen Hard To What's Going On And, Please, I Beg You, Take It Personally. Understand: Every Attack On Hillary Clinton For Not Knowing Her Place Is An Attack On You. Underneath Almost All Those Attacks Are The Words: Get Back, Get Back To Where You Once Belonged.

It Had Better Be Quirky Or Perverse Or Thoughtful Enough So That You Hit Some Chord In Them. I Mean We've All Read Pieces Where We Thought, 'oh, Who Gives A Damn.'

The 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.

In The Way That Women Forget The Pain Of Childbirth, Men Forget That They Cry In Movies.

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.

I Actually Believe In Denial.

[on George W. Bush:] How Is It Possible That The President Is Off On Vacation And The Vice President Is, Too? Not That It Matters That Much If The President Is On Vacation; On Some Level, The President Is Always On Vacation.

It's Always A Shock To The People Who Run Studios When A Movie That Is For Women Is A Hit. They Have An Infinite Capacity To Be Shocked.

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