Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Nora Ephron

American Film Director, Producer, Screenwriter, Novelist, Playwright, Journalist, Author and Blogger, 3-time Nominee for the Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplays for films "Silkwood", "When Harry Met Sally" and "Sleepless in Seattle"

"Well, I'm gonna get out of bed every morning... breathe in and out all day long. Then, after a while I won't have to remind myself to get out of bed every morning and breathe in and out... and, then after a while, I won't have to think about how I had it great and perfect for a while."

"Well, at least this time I get to be a person in the story. The last time you told one of your Russian parables I was a bag of chickens."

"Well, it?s just that my point of view happens to be faintly cynical or humorous?and just the way I see things and that?s how it comes out when I write it."

"What I love about cooking is that after a hard day, there is something comforting about the fact that if you melt butter and add flour and then hot stock, it will get thick! It?s a sure thing! It?s sure thing in a world where nothing is sure; it has a mathematical certainty in a world where those of us who long for some kind of certainty are forced to settle for crossword puzzles."

"We have a game we play when we?re waiting for tables in restaurants, where you have to write the five things that describe yourself on a piece of paper. When I was your age, I would have put: ambitious, Wellesley graduate, daughter, Democrat, single. Ten years later not one of those five things turned up on my list. I was: journalist, feminist, New Yorker, divorced, funny. Today not one of those five things turns up in my list: writer, director, mother, sister, happy. Whatever those five things are for you today, they won?t make the list in ten years ? not that you still won?t be some of those things, but they won?t be the five most important things about you. This is one of the most delicious things available to women, and more particularly to women than to men, I think. It?s slightly easier for us to shift, to change our minds, to take another path."

"Well, it was a million tiny little things that, when you added them all up, they meant we were supposed to be together ... and I knew it. I knew it the very first time I touched her. It was like coming home ... only to no home I'd ever known ... I was just taking her hand to help her out of a car and I knew. It was like ... magic."

"What I?m saying is, don?t delude yourself that the powerful cultural values that wrecked the lives of so many of my classmates have vanished from the earth. Don?t let the New York Times article about the brilliant success of Wellesley graduates in the business world fool you ? there?s still a glass ceiling. Don?t let the number of women in the work force trick you ? there are still lots of magazines devoted almost exclusively to making perfect casseroles and turning various things into tents."

"What my mother believed about cooking is that if you worked hard and prospered, someone else would do it for you."

"What will happen to sex after liberation? Frankly, I don't know. It is a great mystery to all of us."

"What will NY152 say today, I wonder. I turn on my computer. I wait impatiently as it connects. I go online, and my breath catches in my chest until I hear three little words: You've got mail. I hear nothing. Not even a sound on the streets of New York, just the beating of my own heart. I have mail. From you."

"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 women."

"When I first met him, he had a recurrent nightmare that Henry Kissinger was chasing him with a knife, and I said it was really his father, and he said it was really Henry Kissinger, and I said it was his father and he said it was Henry Kissinger, and this went on for months until he started going to the Central American shrinkette, who said Henry Kissinger was really his younger sister."

"When you are actually going to have your last meal, you?ll either be too sick to have it or you aren?t gonna know it?s your last meal and you could squander it on something like a tuna melt and that would be ironic? I feel it?s important to have that last meal today, tomorrow, soon."

"When you have a baby, you set off an explosion in your marriage, and when the dust settles, your marriage is different from what it was. Not better, necessarily; not worse, necessarily; but different."

"When you give up your apartment in New York and move to another city, New York becomes the worst version of itself."

"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."

"When you?re attracted to someone, it just means that your subconscious is attracted to their subconscious, subconsciously. So what we think of as fate is just two neuroses knowing that they are a perfect match."

"Whenever I get married, I start buying Gourmet magazine."

"When you slip on a banana peel, people laugh at you. But when you tell people you slipped on a banana peel, it's your laugh."

"When you're attracted to someone, it just means that your subconscious is attracted to their subconscious, subconsciously. So what we think of as fate is just two neuroses knowing that they are a perfect match."

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

"You always think that a bolt of lightning is going to strike and your parents will magically change into the people you wish they were or back into the people they used to be. But they?re never going to. And even though you know they?re never going to, you still hope they will."

"You are not going to be you, fixed and immutable you, forever."

"Why do people write books that say it's better to be older than to be younger? It's not better. Even if you have all your marbles, you're constantly reaching for the name of the person you met the day before yesterday."

"Working as a journalist is exactly like being the wallflower at the orgy...everyone else is having a marvelous time, laughing merrily, eating, drinking, having sex in the back room, and I am standing on the side taking notes."

"You are the butter to my bread, you are the breath to my life."

"You better make them care about what you think. It had better be quirky or perverse or thoughtful enough so that you hit some chord in them. Otherwise it doesn?t work. I mean we?ve all read pieces where we thought, Oh, who gives a damn."

"You can never have too much butter ? that is my belief. If I have a religion, that?s it."

"You can settle for reality, or you can go off, like a fool, and dream another dream."

"You can?t retrieve your life (unless you?re on Wikipedia, in which case you can retrieve an inaccurate version of it)."

"You gotta learn to laugh; it's the way to true love."

"You lose close friends and discover one of the worst truths of old age: they?re irreplaceable. People who run four miles a day and eat only nuts and berries drop dead. People who drink a quart of whiskey and smoke two packs of cigarettes a day drop dead. You are suddenly in a lottery, the ultimate game of chance, and someday your luck will run out. Everybody dies. There?s nothing you can do about it. Whether or not you eat six almonds a day. Whether or not you believe in God."

"You only have a certain amount of energy, and when you spread it around, everything gets confused, and the first thing you know, you can't remember which one you've told which story to, and the next thing you know, you're moaning Oh, Morty, Morty, Morty, when what you mean is Oh, Sidney, Sidney, Sidney, and the next thing you know, you think you're in love with both of them simply because you've been raised to believe that the only polite response to I love you is I love you too, and the next thing you know, you think you're in love with only one of them, because you're too guilty to handle loving them both."

"You enter into a certain amount of madness when you marry a person with pets."

"You should eat delicious things while you can still eat them, go to wonderful places while you still can ? and not have evenings where you say to yourself, ?What am I doing here? Why am I here? I am bored witless!?"

"You'd be amazed how little choice you have about loony bins."