Nora Ephron Quotes

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.

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

I try to write parts for women that are as complicated and interesting as women actually are.

If pregnancy were a book they would cut the last two chapters.

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.

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

The real reason that we can’t have the Ten Commandments in a courthouse: you cannot post ‘Thou shalt not steal’, ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery’ and ‘Thou shalt not lie’ in a building full of lawyers, judges and politicians. It creates a hostile work environment.

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.

Insane people are always sure that they are fine. It is only the sane people who are willing to admit that they are crazy.

You should eat delicious things while you can still eat them, go to wonderful places while you still can, and not have evenings where you say to yourself, ‘What am I doing here? Am I going to write a book about it?’ Just go!

Nora Ephron Quotes part 2

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.

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

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

People always say that once it’s broken, it can never be fixed. But sometimes, even when it’s broken, it can still be beautiful.

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

Insane people are always sure that they are fine. It is only the sane people who are willing to admit that they are crazy.

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.

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.

There are some people who are so much a part of us, they’ll be with us no matter what. They are our solid ground. Our North Star. And the small clear voices in our hearts that will be with us… always.

Most women do not play as fast and loose with the word ‘fine’ as men do. When a woman says she is fine, she means she will not discuss it further.

Your apartment is not just the place where you sleep, it’s the place where you dream.

Sometimes I think that not having to worry about your hair anymore is the secret upside of death.

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.

Insane people are always sure that they are fine. It is only the sane people who are willing to admit that they are crazy.

If you’re a woman, I can guarantee you one thing: You’ll never have a reasonable conversation with a man. Men just don’t do that. Women communicate, men perform.

I never give up on anything. Well, almost anything. I mean, is there anything more futile? More pathetic? More ridiculously optimistic? What could be more embarrassing? What could be more stupid? What could be more… American?

In my sex fantasy, nobody ever loves me for my mind.

I have to admit that I’m very proud of my goldfish. I’ve managed to keep him alive all these years, which is surprising because I can’t manage to keep a password alive for more than six minutes.

After all, the best part of a holiday is perhaps not so much to be resting yourself, as to see all the other fellows busy working.

The whole purpose of places like Starbucks is for people with no decision-making ability whatsoever to make six decisions just to buy one cup of coffee. Short, tall, light, dark, caf, decaf, low-fat, non-fat, etc.

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

I know for a fact that the movies reflect the culture and they don’t create the culture.

It’s okay to be a little ridiculous sometimes, especially when you’re searching for what makes you truly happy.

If you’re a writer, particularly a female writer, you can’t push yourself forward. You’re supposed to have a lot of bad things happen to you in order to write. You’re not supposed to have the nerve to defend yourself. And when I started to defend myself, the heat of the rap went over to the person I was defending myself against.

I have a theory that movies operate on the level of dreams, where you dream yourself.

My mother wanted us to understand that the tragedies of your life one day have the potential to be comic stories the next.

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.

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.

When I interview people, and they give me an answer I don’t expect, I am delighted. I go right home and like them.

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.

I believe that one of the things that characterizes our species is our curiosity. And, one of the things that characterizes me is my curiosity about why people continue to thrive and what we can do to make that more likely.

Writing is what I do when I am not doing anything else.

You know, there are so many great books in the world that you don’t have to read, you shouldn’t waste your time reading something that doesn’t grab you.

There’s 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.

If you find out that I’ve been talking about you behind your back, don’t be flattered. Because most likely, it’s been pretty negative.