Nora Ephron Quotes

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

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.

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

You're born, you die. Everything in between is subject to interpretation.

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

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

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.

Take notes. Everything is copy.

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

Most of us live our lives devoid of cinematic moments.

The hardest thing about writing is writing.

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

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.

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.

A man who finishes a book is always alone when he finishes it.

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

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?

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

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

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 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.

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

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.

Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape.

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