Great Throughts Treasury

"Most directors, I discovered, need to be convinced that the screenplay they?re going to direct has something to do with them. And this is a tricky thing if you write screenplays where women have parts that are equal to or greater than the male part. And I thought, 'Why am I out there looking for directors?' ? because you look at a list of directors, it?s all boys. It certainly was when I started as a screenwriter. So I thought, 'I?m just gonna become a director and that?ll make it easier.'"

"My idea of a perfect day is a frozen custard at Shake Shack and a walk in the park. (Followed by a Lactaid.) My idea of a perfect night is a good play and dinner at Orso. (But no garlic, or I won't be able to sleep.) The other day I found a bakery that bakes my favorite childhood cake, and it was everything I remembered: it made my week."

"My mother didn?t serve Yorkshire pudding, although there is a recipe for it on page 61 of ?The Gourmet Cookbook.? My mother served potato pancakes instead. I serve Yorkshire pudding and potato pancakes. Why not? You live once."

"Never marry a man you wouldn?t want to be divorced from."

"Oh, how I regret not having worn a bikini for the entire year I was twenty-six. If anyone young is reading this, go, right this minute, put on a bikini, and don?t take it off until you?re thirty-four."

"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."

"No, no, you did not have great sex with Sheldon. A Sheldon can do your income taxes, if you need a root canal, Sheldon's your man... but humpin' and pumpin' is not Sheldon's strong suit. It's the name. 'Do it to me Sheldon, you're an animal Sheldon, ride me big Shel-don.' Doesn't work."

"New Orleans is one of the two most ingrown, self-obsessed little cities in the United States. (The other is San Francisco.)"

"Once I read a story about a butterfly in the subway, and today, I saw one! It got on at 42nd and off at 59th, where, I assume, it was going to Bloomingdales to buy a hat that will turn out to be a mistake, as almost all hats are."

"Reading is one of the main things I do. Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel I've accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. Reading makes me smarter. Reading gives me something to talk about later on. Reading is the unbelievably healthy way my attention deficit disorder medicates itself. Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it's a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it's a way of making contact with someone else's imagination after a day that's all too real. Reading is grist. Reading is bliss."

"One of the only movies about marriage. Of course it's also about drinking."

"One of the things people always say to you if you get upset is, don?t take it personally, but listen hard to what?s going on and, please, I beg you, take it personally. Understand: every attack on Hillary Clinton for not knowing her place is an attack on you. Underneath almost all those attacks are the words: get back, get back to where you once belonged. When Elizabeth Dole pretends that she isn?t serious about her career, that is an attack on you. The acquittal of O.J. Simpson is an attack on you. Any move to limit abortion rights is an attack on you ? whether or not you believe in abortion. The fact that Clarence Thomas is sitting on the Supreme Court today is an attack on you."

"SALLY: Harry, I can?t do this anymore. I am not your consolation prize. Goodbye."

"Secondly, you have to write. And if you don?t have a job doing it, then you have to sit at home doing it."

"She [her Mom] really conveyed to us that work was a great passion; that you couldn?t live without work. When you were asked what you were going to be when you grow up, the question was answered in terms of work?not in terms of motherhood or being married?it was what are you going to do."

"So Lillian Ross came to the party. Before dinner, she asked my mother for a tour of the house. My mother showed her around, and at a certain point, Ross came upon a picture of my three sisters and me. Are these your children? she asked my mother. Yes, my mother said. Do you ever see them? Lillian Ross asked. That did it. My mother walked Lillian Ross downstairs and back to McKelway. Out, she said."

"She's talking about condominiums, my friend Betty Searle called up to say one day. Obviously she's involved with someone. Are you sure? I said. Of course I'm sure, said Betty. The question is who. She thought for a minute. Maybe it's Senator Campbell, she said. He's talking condominiums, too. Senators always talk about condominiums, I said. That's true, said Betty."

"So many of the conscious and unconscious ways men and women treat each other have to do with romantic and sexual fantasies that are deeply ingrained not just in society but in literature.The women?s movement may manage to clean up the mess in society, but I don?t know if it can clean up the mess in our minds."

"Sometimes I believe that love dies but hope springs eternal. Sometimes I believe that hope dies but love springs eternal. Sometimes I believe that sex plus guilt equals love, and sometimes I believe that sex plus guilt equals good sex. Sometimes I believe that love is as natural as the tides, and sometimes I believe that love is an act of will. Sometimes I believe that some people are better at love than others, and sometimes I believe that everyone is faking it. Sometimes I believe that love is essential, and sometimes I believe that only reason love is essential is that otherwise you spend all your time looking for it."

"So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, when shouldn't it be the other way around?"

"Sometimes I wonder about my life. I lead a small life - well, valuable, but small - and sometimes I wonder, do I do it because I like it, or because I haven't been brave? So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, when shouldn't it be the other way around? I don't really want an answer. I just want to send this cosmic question out into the void. So good night, dear void."

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

"Sometimes, when you are a food person, the possible irrelevance of what you are doing doesn?t cross your mind until it?s too late. (Once, for example, when I was just starting out in the food business, I was hired by the caper people to develop a lot of recipes using capers, and it was weeks of tossing capers into just about everything but milkshakes before I came to terms with the fact that nobody really likes capers no matter what you do with them. Some people pretend to like capers, but the truth is that any dish that tastes good with capers in it tastes even better with capers not in in."

"Stare at me in this faceless way, go mad with desire, and rip my clothes off. It's terrific. In my sex fantasy, nobody ever loves me for my mind."

"Suddenly, one day, there was this thing called parenting. Parenting was serious. Parenting was fierce. Parenting was solemn. Parenting was a participle, like going and doing and crusading and worrying."

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

"Take notes. Everything is copy."

"The odd thing about this form of communication is you're more likely to talk about nothing than something. But I just want to say that all this nothing has meant more to me than so many... somethings. So, thanks."

"The state of rapture I experience when I read a wonderful book is one of the main reasons I read; but it doesn't happen every time or even every other time, and when it does happen, I am truly beside myself."

"That's the catch about betrayal, of course: that it feels good, that there's something immensely pleasurable about moving from a complicated relationship which involves minor atrocities on both sides to a nice, neat, simple one where one person has done something so horrible and unforgivable that the other person is immediately absolved of all the low-grade sins of sloth, envy, gluttony, avarice and I forget the other three."

"The amount of maintenance involving hair is genuinely overwhelming. Sometimes I think that not having to worry about your hair anymore is the secret upside of death."

"The big cities of America are becoming Third World countries"

"The hardest thing about writing is writing."

"The divorce has lasted way longer than the marriage, but finally it?s over. Enough about that. The point is that for a long time, the fact that I was divorced was the most important thing about me. And now it?s not."

"The image of the journalist as wallflower at the orgy has been replaced by the journalist as the life of the party."

"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."

"The major concrete achievement of the women's movement of the 1970's was the Dutch treat."

"There isn?t an ugly girl in American who wouldn?t exchange her problems for the problems of being beautiful; I don?t believe there is a beautiful girl anywhere who would honestly prefer to not be."

"There is something called the rapture of the deep, and it refers to what happens when a deep-sea diver spends too much time at the bottom of the ocean and can?t tell which way is up. When he surfaces, he?s liable to have a condition called the bends, where the body can?t adapt to the oxygen levels in the atmosphere. All of this happens to me when I surface from a great book."

"The thing with friends when you get older -- I mean this is not anything I haven't written about -- is they can't be replaced. When you're 30, you accumulate friends and you shed friends and you get closer at certain moments to some than others. And you have a huge bench of friends. And then that's just not true."

"The whole purpose of places like Starbucks is for people with no decision-making ability whatsoever to make six decisions just to buy one cup of coffee. Short, tall, light, dark, caf, decaf, low-fat, non-fat, etc. So people who don't know what the hell they're doing or who on earth they are can, for only $2.95, get not just a cup of coffee but an absolutely defining sense of self."

"There's something called the rapture of the deep, and it refers to what happens when a deep-sea diver spends too much time at the bottom of the ocean and can't tell which way is up. When he surfaces, he's liable to have a condition called the bends, where the body can't adapt to the oxygen level in the atmosphere. All this happens to me when I surface from a great book."

"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."

"This is the season when a clutch of successful women -- who have it all -- give speeches to women like you and say, to be perfectly honest, you can't have it all. Maybe young women don't wonder whether they can have it all any longer, but in case of you are wondering, of course you can have it all. What are you going to do? Everything, is my guess. It will be a little messy, but embrace the mess. It will be complicated, but rejoice in the complications. It will not be anything like what you think it will be like, but surprises are good for you. And don't be frightened: you can always change your mind. I know: I've had four careers and three husbands."

"The Wonderbra is not a step forward for women. Nothing that hurts that much is a step forward for women."

"There were cats; cats I was wildly attached to ? my husband and I spoke in cat voices. Once the marriage was over, I never thought of the cats again (until I wrote about them in a novel and disguised them as hamsters)."

"There?s a reason why forty, fifty, and sixty don?t look the way they used to, and it?s not because of feminism, or better living through exercise. It?s because of hair dye. In the 1950?s 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."

"To state the obvious, romantic comedies have to be funny and they have to be romantic. But one of the most important things, for me anyway, is that they be about two strong people finding their way to love."

"Vera said: ?Why do you feel you have to turn everything into a story?? So I told her why. Because if I tell the story, I control the version. Because if I tell the story, I can make you laugh, and I would rather have you laugh at me than feel sorry for me. Because if I tell the story, it doesn't hurt as much. Because if I tell the story, I can get on with it."

"We all look good for our age. Except for our necks."