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.
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.
Insane people are always sure that they are fine. It is only the sane people who are willing to admit that they are crazy.
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.
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.
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.
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.
My mother wanted us to understand that the tragedies of your life one day have the potential to be comic stories the next.
I just bring a black turtleneck sweater everywhere - it's the greatest purchase of my life. Period.
I am continually fascinated at the difficulty intelligent people have in distinguishing what is controversial from what is merely offensive.
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.
If pregnancy were a book they would cut the last two chapters.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Denial has been a way of life for me for many years. I actually believe in denial.
I'm religious about salted butter. I don't understand how it happened that everyone thought we should all have sweet butter. I blame the French.
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.
One of the best things about directing movies, as opposed to merely writing them, is that there's no confusion about who's to blame: you are.
The best divorce is the kind where there are no children. That was my first divorce. You walk out the door and you never look back.
I grew up with fantastic Southern food. In Southern California.
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.
Writing is what I do. It's like breathing to me at a certain point, but if I couldn't write, I do like cooking.
My second divorce was the worst kind of divorce. There were two children; one had just been born. My husband was in love with someone else.
I survived turning 60, I was not thrilled to turn 61, I was less thrilled to turn 62, I didn't much like being 63, I loathed being 64, and I will hate being 65. I don't let on about such things in person; in person, I am cheerful and Pollyanna-ish. But the honest truth is that it's sad to be over 60.
I'm a good cook, and I look at something like 'Iron Chef' and think, 'It's a good thing I already know how to cook' - because I would never think I could do it if I watched these shows.
In my sex fantasy, nobody ever loves me for my mind.
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.
Everything matches black, especially black.
The truth is that most marriages have food as a major player in them, and certainly mine does.
I just want to go on making movies, and some of them will be completely meaningless, except, of course, to me.
'Sleepless' was a script that had been written by three or four other writers before me, and it never really worked, but it had this amazing ending on the top of the Empire State Building that just worked, no matter what came before it.
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.
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 am the kind of person who really will drive hours for a bowl of chili. I'm not a three-star restaurant kind of a person; I'm just a food person.
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.
All I do when I write scripts is think about food: 'Have I worked long enough to justify a walk to the kitchen?'
I think when you get older, things come along that you know are a test in some way of your ability to stay with it. And when e-mail came along, I was just going to fall in love with it. And I did. I can't believe it now - it's like one of those ex-husbands that you think, 'What was I thinking?'
I use those medical gloves that fit very tightly and are disposable for all chopping - peppers, onions, garlic, etc. Very Lady Macbeth, I think.
What my mother believed about cooking is 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 profound, but I haven't.
At the age of 55, you will get a saggy roll just above your waist, even if you are painfully thin.
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 anti-magical thing. It comes from the recognition that it is not going to be 'the' dress.
Summer bachelors, like summer breezes, are never as cool as they pretend to be.
I don't think any day is worth living without thinking about what you're going to eat next at all times.
