Quotes from Nora Ephron

I didn't speak French well at all and did these terrible interviews in pigeon French.

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?

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.

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.

Ahora sé que la verdad no existe. Que las declaraciones de la gente se tergiversan continuamente. Que los medios de comunicación son un hervidero de conspiraciones (y que, en cualquier caso, la ineptitud es una forma de conspiración). Que con cinismo y desapego emocional no se llega demasiado lejos.

But the truth is you don't always know you're getting a divorce. For years, you're married. Then, one day, the concept of divorce enters your head. It sits there for a while. You lean toward it and then you lean away. You make lists. You calculate how much it will cost. You tote up grievances, and pluses and minuses.

You can eat all sorts of things that are high in dietary cholesterol (like lobster and avocado and eggs) and they have NO EFFECT WHATSOEVER on your cholesterol count. NONE. WHATSOEVER. DID YOU HEAR ME?

So this is my moment to say what's been in my heart for years: it's time to put a halt to the egg-white omelette.

As for egg salad, here's our recipe: boil eighteen eggs, peel them, and send six of the egg whites to friends in California who persist in thinking that egg whites matter in any way.

My own feeling is that a taste for plain potatoes coincides with cultural antecedents I do not possess, and that in any case, the time for plain potatoes--if there is ever a time for plain potatoes--is never at the beginning of something. It is also, I should add, never at the end of something. Perhaps you can get away with plain potatoes in the middle, although I have never been able to.

And I am never going back to Africa; the last time I was there, in 1972, there were no hairdressers out in the bush, and as far as I was concerned, that was the end of that place.

Why would anyone want to do it on the floor when a bed was available? I'll tell you the truth: even sex on a beach seems to me to be going too far.

Once I picked up a copy of Vogue while having my hair done, and it cost me twenty thousand dollars. But you should see my teeth.

I've noticed that almost no one wants some fresh ground black pepper on his salad. Why they even bother asking is a mystery to me.

I would love to be a sellout if only someone would ask.

Dessert spoons are large, oval-shaped spoons. They are so large that you could go for a swim in them.

I had always zipped through that part of the speech as if I had somehow managed to be invulnerable to the fantasy, as if I had somehow managed to escape from or rise above it simply as a result of having figured it out. 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.

I had long since ceased to believe in the existence of that mystical sisterly loyalty women are alleged to feel toward one another.

There's nothing worse than having people to a dinner that they all just polish off and before you know it, they're done eating and dinner is over and it's only ten o'clock and everyone leaves and it's just you and the dishes.

Oímos montones de historias a lo largo de la infancia y, cuando nos hacemos mayores, de repente descubrimos algo que no pasa la prueba olfativa. En cierto modo, son demasiado redondas.

I know that the pendulum often has to swing a few degrees into the wrong direction before righting itself, but it does get wearing sometimes waiting for the center to catch hold.

Las personas que fueron tienen un inmenso poder sobre ti —tardarás cuarenta años en comprarte un abrigo rojo (y te lo pondrás solo una vez)—, mientras que las personas en las que se han convertido no tienen el más mínimo poder sobre ti.

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.

Look at the parts the Oscar-nominated actresses played this year: hooker, hooker, hooker, hooker, and nun.