Quotes by Nora Ephron

“Sometimes I believe that some people are better at love than others, and sometimes I believe that everyone is faking it”

“Beware of men who cry. Its true that men who cry are sensitive to and in touch with feelings, but the only feelings they tend to be sensitive to and in touch with are their own.”

“[A successful parent is one] who raises a child who grows up and is able to pay for his or her own psychoanalysis.”

“You enter into a certain amount of madness when you marry a person with pets”

“It seemed to me that 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”

“I am continually fascinated at the difficulty intelligent people have in distinguishing what is controversial from what is merely offensive.”

“I dont care who you are. When you sit down to write the first page of your screenplay, in your head, youre also writing your Oscar acceptance speech.”

I love that you get cold when its 71 degrees out. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when youre looking at me like Im nuts. I love that after I spend the day with you, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes. And I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And its not because Im lonely, and its not because its New Years Eve. I came here tonight because 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.

I have made a lot of mistakes falling in love, and regrettedmost of them, but never the potatoes that went with them.

When I buy a new book, I always read the last page first, that way in case I die before I finish, I know how it ends. That, my friend, is a dark side.

When your children are teenagers, its important to have a dog so that someone in the house is happy to see you.

Its always hard to remember love - years pass and you say to yourself, Was I really in love, or was I just kidding myself? Was I really in love, or was I just pretending he was the man of my dreams? Was I really in love, or was I just desperate?

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 doesnt 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.

Harry Burns: You realize of course that we could never be friends. Sally Albright: Why not? Harry Burns: What Im saying is - and this is not a come-on in any way, shape or form - is that men and women cant be friends because the sex part always gets in the way. Sally Albright: Thats not true. I have a number of men friends and there is no sex involved. Harry Burns: No you dont. Sally Albright: Yes I do. Harry Burns: No you dont. Sally Albright: Yes I do. Harry Burns: You only think you do. Sally Albright: You say Im having sex with these men without my knowledge? Harry Burns: No, what Im saying is they all WANT to have sex with you. Sally Albright: They do not. Harry Burns: Do too. Sally Albright: They do not. Harry Burns: Do too. Sally Albright: How do you know? Harry Burns: Because no man can be friends with a woman that he finds attractive. He always wants to have sex with her. Sally Albright: So, youre saying that a man can be friends with a woman he finds unattractive? Harry Burns: No. You pretty much want to nail em too. Sally Albright: What if THEY dont want to have sex with YOU? Harry Burns: Doesnt matter because the sex thing is already out there so the friendship is ultimately doomed and that is the end of the story. Sally Albright: Well, I guess were not going to be friends then. Harry Burns: I guess not. Sally Albright: Thats too bad. You were the only person I knew in New York.

As Harry puts it, men and women can never be friends because the sex part always gets in the way.

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

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

The desire to get married is a basic and primal instinct in women. Its followed by another basic and primal instinct: the desire to be single again.

Theres a reason why forty, fifty, and sixty dont look the way they used to, and its not because of feminism, or better living through exercise. Its because of hair dye. In the 1950s 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.

Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; its a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and its a way of making contact with someone elses imagination after a day thats all too real.