Nora Ephron

“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.”

“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.”

“One good thing I'd like to say about divorce is that it sometimes makes it possible for you to be a much better wife to your next husband because you have a place for your anger - it's not directed at the person you're currently with.”

“My parents had drinks and there were crudités for us- although they were not called crudités at the time, they were called carrots and celery.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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 w”

“What will happen to sex after liberation? Frankly, I don't know. It is a great mystery to all of us.”

“My religion is Get Over It.”

“Here's the thing about dessert--you want it to last. You want to savor it.”

“My marriage to him was as willful an act as I have ever committed; I married him against all the 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.”

“Your hair doesn't need to be washed every day any more than your black pants have to be dry-cleaned every time you wear them.”

“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.”

“Summer bachelors, like summer breezes, are never as cool as they pretend to be.”