Quotes from Nora Ephron

I just want to go on making movies, and some of them will be completely meaningless, except, of course, to me.

In California, of course, they never break up couples at dinner for fear of what might happen if someone's husband were seated next to someone else's very young girlfriend. But dinners with couples seated next to one another are always deadly dull, which is why there are almost no good dinner parties in the entire state of California.

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

At the age of 55, you will get a saggy roll just above your waist, even if you are painfully thin.

The best divorce is the kind where there are no children. That was my first divorce. You walk out the door and you never look back.

Everything matches black, especially black.

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

Washington is a city of important men and the women they married before they grew up.

I am the kind of person who really will drive hours for a bowl of chili. I'm not a three-star restaurant kind of a person; I'm just a food person.

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

In the way that women forget the pain of childbirth, men forget that they cry in movies.

As far as the men who are running for president are concerned, they aren't even people I would date.

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.

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

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.

Everybody dies. There's nothing you can do about it. Whether you eat six almonds a day. Whether or not you believe in God.

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.

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.

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

I'm a good cook, and I look at something like 'Iron Chef' and think, 'It's a good thing I already know how to cook' - because I would never think I could do it if I watched these shows.

Everyone loves fried chicken, Don't ever make it. Ever. Buy it from a place that makes good fried chicken.

Everybody dies. There's no avoiding it, and I do not believe for one second that butter is the cause of anyone's death. Overeating may be, but not butter, please. I just feel bad for people who make that mistake.

Never marry a man you wouldn't want to be divorced from.

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.