I don't think there was ever a dish that changed my life. I certainly remember a constant series of things that I had for the first time and thought, 'Where has this been all my life?' One was brie. I mean, oh my God! One was my first soft-shell crabs.

Nora Ephron

Everyone loves fried chicken, Don't ever make it. Ever. Buy it from a place that makes good fried chicken.

Nora Ephron

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

Nora Ephron

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.

Nora Ephron

Insane people are always sure that they are fine. It is only the sane people who are willing to admit that they are crazy.

Nora Ephron

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. So you become the hero rather than the victim of the joke.

Nora Ephron

Beware of men who cry. It's 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.

Nora Ephron

Death is a sniper. It strikes people you love, people you like, people you know - it's everywhere. You could be next. But then you turn out not to be. But then again, you could be.

Nora Ephron

Nothing like mashed potatoes when you're feeling blue. Nothing like getting into bed with a bowl of hot mashed potatoes already loaded with butter, and methodically adding a thin, cold slice of butter to every forkful.

Nora Ephron

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

Nora Ephron

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

Nora Ephron

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

Nora Ephron

Oh, how I regret not having worn a bikini for the entire year I was 26. If anyone young is reading this, go, right this minute, put on a bikini, and don't take it off until you're 34.

Nora Ephron

If pregnancy were a book they would cut the last two chapters.

Nora Ephron

You do get to a certain point in life where you have to realistically, I think, understand that the days are getting shorter, and you can't put things off thinking you'll get to them someday. If you really want to do them, you better do them. There are simply too many people getting sick, and sooner or later you will.

Nora Ephron

When we were working on 'Julie & Julia,' I went back to the Julia Child cookbook and made some things I haven't made in a while, one being beef bourguignon, which to me is a hilariously 1960s dish that everyone felt they had to serve at a dinner party or they weren't a grown-up.

Nora Ephron

I don't have writer's block, really. I do have times when I can't get the lead, and that is the only part of the story which I have serious trouble with. I don't write a word of the article until I have the lead. It just sets the whole tone - the whole point of view.

Nora Ephron

In California, of course, they never break up couples at dinner for fear of what might happen if someone's husband were seated next to someone else's very young girlfriend. But dinners with couples seated next to one another are always deadly dull, which is why there are almost no good dinner parties in the entire state of California.

Nora Ephron

I have now been married to my third husband for more than 20 years. But when you've had children with someone you're divorced from, divorce defines everything; it's the lurking fact, a slice of anger in the pie of your brain.

Nora Ephron

The one thing my mother did make was what was known at the time as lox and onions and eggs. Now, no one makes it with lox; they make it with nova. That was my mother's specialty, which she cooked on New Year's Day for the Rose Bowl games, which we had a party for every year. It took her about an hour to make scrambled eggs.

Nora Ephron

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.

Nora Ephron