Nora Ephron

“Whenever I get married, I start buying Gourmet magazine.”

“Directing movies is the best job there is, that's all. I can hardly say a word after that. It's just a great job.”

“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 only I had grown up worshipping Julia Child. I was already grown up - thank you very much - when Julia Child's book was published. When I moved to New York in 1962, you had to own it.”

“I was alive during the women's lib movement, and I do not remember anyone taking a position against cooking. I think they were talking about other things.”

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

“Everything matches black, especially black.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“When you're young, you think that clothes are almost magical, and that if you wear the right thing - to school, to the prom, on the date, etc. - something's going to happen. Black, it's the...”

“I just bring a black turtleneck sweater everywhere - it's the greatest purchase of my life. Period.”

“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.”

“The realization that I may have only a few good years remaining has hit me with real force, and I have done a lot of thinking as a result. I would like to have come up with something profoun...”

“I go through periods where I work a great deal at all hours of the day whenever I am around a typewriter, and then I go through spells where I don't do anything. I just sort of have lunch -...”

“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.”

“I grew up with fantastic Southern food. In Southern California.”

“Every 10 years or so, there was a moment when I'd say, even subconsciously, 'Is that all there is?' You've got to find ways to keep it fresh for yourself.”

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

“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.”