Quotes from Delia Ephron

Am I being too critical? That's what happens when you feel shitty about yourself. You turn into a bitch.

Who cared that he couldn't spell? She was a good-enough speller for both of them. With luck, their children would take after her.

Do you think you can cause something to happen just from wanting it so much?' she asked. 'I don't get what you mean. Does this have to do with your dad?' asked Frannie. 'Not really. I'm talking about loneliness.' Frannie turned around and considered her answer. For awhile she seemed to be in a wilderness of her own. 'Do you mean that you imagined that Issy was your friend?' 'Yes, so completely that it was real.' 'Oh, that can happen. I believe that totally. Loneliness is powerful.

When parents die, the dream dies, too—the dream that they will see you for who you really are (and, I suppose, the dream that they will ever be the parents you wish for).

We don't discuss death. Not that we avoid it. It's just that here, we're preoccupied with life.

No one can truly know the answer to the question, What will you do when you lose the person you love?

She has bitten into a crisp juicy apple and wondered if the bite and the thought were connected-- one never knew what went together, and seemingly random acts could be cosmically related.

I love it that I'm standing alone, it doesn't bother me, actually I prefer it, actually I don't give a shit. I am a superior being in an alien world. No, in a world of red-faced aliens. That thought tickled her, but only for a minute. Mainly she longed to feel that she wasn't invisible.

The silence in the apartment is loud.

This is an example of why travel is important. It changes perspective. It alters your eyes and ears, puts unexpected notions into your head, provides aha moments.

Now he wasn't going to be here to love me or to talk to me. To have conversations with me about everything. Stuff. What was on his mind.

A man doesn't recognize his own wife. Because she's happy.

realize I hate the word widow. It's sexless. I'm never using it again.)

You are a long trail through the woods," she said. "And in the woods people prefer a shortcut." Our

what we want to believe about life: that good comes of bad and all the absurdities play out in your favor.

He was my true home. My first safe place.

In life one rarely knows which remarks of the hundreds uttered in the course of a day will turn out to be auspicious. In fiction, foreshadowing is planted and flagged in some (hopefully or desperately) subtle way, drama demands it.

There is a rule I live by: People begin as they mean to continue.

I heard her surprise and then the sigh as we began the rhythm of connection and self-absorption, the miracle of sex.

I've gotten to make my living by my imagination. That's a lovely thing.

Parkinson's is a wicked illness, slowly diluting his ability to be in the world. His voice is faint, his gait unsteady, but he is, as always, charming, smart, and, most of all, interested in other people.

in the family I grew up in, being called boring was like being called an ax murderer.

Someone will always tell you what you want to hear.