Nora Ephron Heartburn Quotes

And then the dreams break into a million tiny pieces. The dream dies. Which leaves you with a choice: you can settle for reality, or you can go off, like a fool, and dream another dream.

I look out the window and I see the lights and the skyline and the people on the street rushing around looking for action, love, and the world's greatest chocolate chip cookie, and my heart does a little dance.

I married him against all evidence. I married him believing that marriage doesn't 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.

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.

I always read the last page of a book first so that if I die before I finish I'll know how it turned out.

Every so often I would look at my women friends who were happily married and didn't cook, and I would always find myself wondering how they did it. Would anyone love me if I couldn't cook? I always thought cooking was part of the package: Step right up, it's Rachel Samstat, she's bright, she's funny and she can cook!

You fall in love with someone, and part of what you love about him are the differences between you; and then you get married and the differences start to drive you crazy.

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.

I must try this again, I thought; I must try again someday to sit still and not say a word. Maybe when I'm dead.

Everyone always asks, was he mad at you for writing the book? and I have to say, Yes, yes, he was. He still is. It is one of the most fascinating things to me about the whole episode: he cheated on me, and then got to behave as if he was the one who had been wronged because I wrote about it! I mean, it's not as if I wasn't a writer. It's not as if I hadn't often written about myself. I'd even written about him. What did he think was going to happen? That I would take a vow of silence for the first time in my life?

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.

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

[I] had gotten to the point where I simply could not make a bad vinaigrette, this was not exactly the stuff of drama. (Even now, I cannot believe Mark would want to risk losing that vinaigrette. You just don't bump into vinaigrettes that good.)

Show me a woman who cries when the trees lose their leaves in autumn and I’ll show you a real asshole.

checked out the mirror to see if I looked older, or sadder, or wiser. I didn’t; I just looked tired.

I loved to cook, so I cooked. And then the cooking became a way of saying I love you. And then the cooking became the easy way of saying I love you. And then the cooking became the only way of saying I love you.

In a socialist country you can get rich by providing necessities, while in a capitalist country you can get rich by providing luxuries.

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.

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.

In the end, I always want potatoes. Mashed potatoes. 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. The problem with mashed potatoes, though, is that they require almost as much hard work as crisp potatoes, and when you’re feeling blue the last thing you feel like is hard work. Of course, you can always get someone to make the mashed potatoes for you, but let’s face it: the reason you’re blue is that there isn’t anyone to make them for you.

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.

I think I was so entranced with being a couple that I didn’t even notice that the person I thought I was a couple with thought he was a couple with someone else.

All beginnings are intrinsically happy.

Men … I hate them. I’ve always hated them. You wonder why I always hang around with women and never with men, it’s because men do things like this.

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.

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.

But the story I'm telling here began the day I discovered the affair between Mark and Thelma, and it ended exactly six weeks later. It has a happy ending, but that's because I insist on happy endings; I would insist on happy beginnings, too, but that's not necessary because all beginnings are intrinsically happy, in my opinion. What about middles, you may ask. Middles are a problem. Middles are perhaps the major problem of contemporary life.

He loved Thelma, Jonathan said, he had never loved anyone but Thelma, he had loved Thelma for nineteen years and would always love her even though Thelma didn't give a rat's ass about him and never had.

I remember thinking that no one had ever told me how much I would love my child; now, of course, I realized something else no one tells you: that a child is a grenade. 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.

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.

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 doesn't 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.

[S]ometimes, 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.

Jonathan never takes anything personally; he always sees himself as a statistical reflection of a larger trend in society.

Let's face it: everyone is the one person on earth you shouldn't get involved with. p83

Helen is one of those people who never say anything, not because she’s shy but because she’s learned—in a way I always mean to—that if you don’t say anything, you make people far more nervous and self-conscious and careful around you than if you do. People like me, we just rush into the vacuum of silence people like Helen float around in; we blather and dither and yakyakyak, and people like Helen just sit there and smile into the wind.

I think you often have that sense when you write-that if you can spot something in yourself and set it down on paper, you're free of it. And you're not, of course; you've just managed to set it down on paper, that's all.

The truth is that if my father weren't my father, he would be one of the men he hates; he is incorrigibly faithless and thoroughly narcissistic, to such an extent that I tend to forget he's also capable of being a real peach.

Men," he said as he left. "I hate them. I've always hated them. You wonder why I always hang around with women and never with men, it's because men do things like this." He waved his hand vaguely at me and my stomach and jogged off into the night.

Vera looked at me, and her eyes filled with tears. She does this sometimes, especially when I’m being hateful and difficult; she responds by having all the feelings I’m refusing to have. Now she reached over and took my hand, and we both began to cry.

One thing I have never understood is how to work it so that when you're married, things keep happening to you. Things happen to you when you're single. You meet new men, you travel alone, you learn new tricks, you read Trollope, you try sushi, you buy nightgowns, you shave your legs. Then you get married, and the hair grows in. I love the everydayness of marriage, I love figuring out what's for dinner and where to hang the pictures and do we owe the Richardsons, but life does tend to slow to a crawl.

it takes two people to hurt you,” I said. “The one who does it and the one who tells you.

Every so often I contemplate suicide merely to remind myself of my complete lack of interest in it as a solution to anything at all.

That's what a marriage is...Pieces break off, and you glue them back on.

This year things are different. This year my husband is a stranger. Do not let this stranger see me eviscerated.

Men are little boys, she would have said as she lifted her glass. Don’t stir or you’ll bruise the ice cubes.

I think of myself as a healthy person with a strong sex drive, but it’s never occurred to me to forgo meals.

I'll tell you how sensible Arthur is: he doesn't even mind being bald.

We all have stories like that, stories we rely on to establish our charm in the beginning of relationships.

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.

The Key lime pie is very simple to make. First you line a 9-inch pie plate with a graham cracker crust. Then beat 6 egg yolks. Add I cup lime juice (even bottled lime juice will do), two 14-ounce cans sweetened condensed milk, and I tablespoon grated lime rind. Pour into the pie shell and freeze. Remove from freezer and spread with whipped cream. Let sit five minutes before serving.

And then it hit me: he doesn't love me. It hit me with a shimmering clarity: that was all there was to it. It didn't matter if he was crazy. It didn't matter if I was innocent or guilty. Nothing mattered except that he didn't love me. If I throw this pie at him, he will never love me. But he doesn't love me anyway. So I can throw the pie if I want to. I picked up the pie and thanked God for the linoleum floor, and threw it.

Cream 2 cups sugar with 2 sticks butter. Then add 2 ½ cups milk, one 13-ounce can evaporated milk, 2 tablespoons nutmeg, 2 tablespoons vanilla, a loaf of wet bread in chunks and pieces (any bread will do, the worse the better) and 1 cup raisins. Stir to mix. Pour into a deep greased casserole and bake at 350° for 2 hours, stirring after the first hour. Serve warm with hard sauce. For the most part, Arthur Siegel is remarkably

The next man I was involved with lived in Boston. He taught me to cook mushrooms. He taught me that if you heat the butter very hot and put just a very few mushrooms into the frying pan, they come out nice and brown and crispy, whereas if the butter is only moderately hot and you crowd the mushrooms, they get all mushy and wet. Every time I make mushrooms I think of him. There was another man in my life when I was younger who taught me to put sour cream into scrambled eggs, and since I never ever put sour cream into scrambled eggs I never really think of him at all.

I know," I said, "but it scares me. It reminds me of my father." I'm not your father," said Mark. "Repeat after me, 'Mark Feldman is not my father.'" Mark Feldman is not my father," I said. Am I fat?" said Mark. No," I said. Am I bald?" No." Do I smell of Dr. Scholl's foot pads?" No," I said. I rest my case," said Mark.

I contemplated suicide. Every so often I contemplate suicide merely to remind myself of my complete lack of interest in it as a solution to anything at all. There was a time when I worried about this, when I thought galloping neurosis was wildly romantic, when I longed to be the sort of girl who knew the names of wildflowers and fed baby birds with eyedroppers and rescued bugs from swimming pools and wanted from time to time to end it all. Now, in my golden years, I have come to accept the fact that there is not a neurasthenic drop of blood in my body, and I have become very impatient with it in others. Show me a woman who cries when the trees lose their leaves in autumn and I’ll show you a real asshole.

I always read the last page of a book first so that if I die before I finish I'll know how it turned out.

Try flying any plane with a baby if you want a sense of what it must have been like to be a leper in the fourteenth century.

He wasn’t exactly my type, but look where my type had gotten me.

(Even now, I cannot believe Mark would want to risk losing that vinaigrette. You just don’t bump into vinaigrettes that good.)

he accused me of the thing men think is the most insulting thing they can accuse you of—wanting to be married

When you want them to die, they never do.

It's hopeless. I know that, but I never really get it. I go right on. I think to myself: I was wrong about the last one, but I'll try harder to be right about the next one.

It occurred to me that if I stayed in bed much longer, I would be forced to watch a soap opera. That seemed redundant, so I got up and went to group.

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.

What?' I said. 'Do you believe in love?' he said. 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 the only reason love is essential is that otherwise you spend all your time looking for it. 'Yes,' I said. 'I do.

Try flying any plane with a baby if you want a sense of what it must have been like to be a leper in the fourteenth century, but try the shuttle for the ultimate in shunning. All those men in suits, looking at you as if your baby is going to throw up over their speech drafts; all those men in suits who used to look at me with respect when I pulled out my American Express gold card, now barely able to conceal their contempt for me and my portable Wet Ones.

You fall in love with someone, and part of what you love about him are the differences between you; and then you get married and the differences start to drive you crazy. You fall in love with someone and you say to yourself, oh, well, I never really cared about politics, bridge, French and tennis; and then you get married and it starts to drive you crazy that you’re married to someone who doesn’t even know who’s running for President. This is the moment when any therapist will tell you that your problem is fear of intimacy; that you’re connecting to your mother, or holding on to your father. But it seems to me that what’s happening is far more basic; it seems to me that it’s just about impossible to live with someone else.

It’s hard when you don’t like someone a friend marries. First of all, it means you pretty much have to confine your friendship to lunch, and I hate lunch. Second of all, it means that even a simple flat inquiry like “How’s Helen?” is taken amiss, since your friend always thinks that what you hope he’s going to say is “Dead.” You feel irritated because your darling friend has married beneath himself, and he feels irritated because you don’t see the virtues of his beloved. Then, if your friend’s marriage fails, he becomes even more irritated at you, because if you had been a real friend, you would have prevented him physically from making the mistake, you would have locked him up in a closet until the urge to get married had passed.

I was fascinated by the story. I couldn't believe that anyone would be so sexually driven that he might actually skip lunch- and after an auction. I think of myself as a healthy person with a strong sex drive, but it's never occurred to me to forego meals.

but here is the best peach pie we made: Put 1 ¼ cups flour, ½ teaspoon salt, ½ cup butter and 2 tablespoons sour cream into a Cuisinart and blend until they form a ball. Pat out into a buttered pie tin, and bake 10 minutes at 425°. Beat 3 egg yolks slightly and combine with 1 cup sugar, 2 tablespoons flour and ⅓ cup sour cream. Pour over 3 peeled, sliced peaches arranged in the crust. Cover with foil. Reduce the oven to 350° and bake 35 minutes. Remove the foil and bake 10 minutes more, or until the filling is set.

I want him to stop seeing her. I want him to say he never really loved her. I want him to say he must have been crazy. I want her to die. I want him to die, too." "I thought you said you wanted him back," said Ellis. "I do," I said, "but I want him back dead.

Anyway, here’s how you make it: Take 6 cups defrosted lima beans, 6 pears peeled and cut into slices, ½ cup molasses, ½ cup chicken stock, ½ onion chopped, put into a heavy casserole, cover and bake 12 hours at 200°. That’s the sort of food she loved to serve, something that looked

Mix 2 tablespoons Grey Poupon mustard with 2 tablespoons good red wine vinegar. Then, whisking constantly with a fork, slowly add 6 tablespoons olive oil, until the vinaigrette is thick and creamy; this makes a very strong vinaigrette that’s perfect for salad greens like arugola and watercress and endive.

First you line a 9-inch pie plate with a graham cracker crust. Then beat 6 egg yolks. Add I cup lime juice (even bottled lime juice will do), two 14-ounce cans sweetened condensed milk, and I tablespoon grated lime rind. Pour into the pie shell and freeze. Remove from freezer and spread with whipped cream. Let sit five minutes before serving.

cracker crust and pack it into a 9-inch pie pan. Then mix 12 ounces cream cheese with 4 well-beaten eggs, 1 cup sugar and a teaspoon vanilla. Pour into the pie shell and bake 45 minutes at 350°. Remove and cool 15 minutes. Then spread gently with 2 cups sour cream mixed with ½ cup sugar and bake 10 minutes more. Cool and refrigerate several hours before serving.

Drop 5 large tomatoes into boiling water for one full minute. Peel and seed and chop. Put into a large bowl with ½ cup olive oil, a garlic clove sliced in two, 1 cup chopped fresh basil leaves, salt and hot red pepper flakes. Let sit for a couple of hours, then remove the garlic. Boil one pound of linguine, drain and toss with the cold tomato mixture. Serve immediately.

My own feeling is that a taste for plain potatoes coincides with cultural antecedents I do not possess, and that in any case, the time for plain potatoes--if there is ever a time for plain potatoes--is never at the beginning of something. It is also, I should add, never at the end of something. Perhaps you can get away with plain potatoes in the middle, although I have never been able to.

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.

We all have stories like that, stories we rely on to establish our charm in the beginning of relationships. I tell one about wanting to play the ukulele in the school orchestra. They asked me what instrument I wanted to play, and I said the ukulele, and they said, but there’s no ukulele in the school orchestra, and I said, then what can I play that’s like the ukulele, and they said the viola. That story doesn’t sound so charming on the page, but I tell it very well.

Here’s Amelia’s cheesecake recipe; she always said she got it from the back of the Philadelphia cream cheese package. Make a nice graham cracker crust and pack it into a 9-inch pie pan. Then mix 12 ounces cream cheese with 4 well-beaten eggs, 1 cup sugar and a teaspoon vanilla. Pour into the pie shell and bake 45 minutes at 350°. Remove and cool 15 minutes. Then spread gently with 2 cups sour cream mixed with ½ cup sugar and bake 10 minutes more. Cool and refrigerate several hours before serving.

bread pudding recipe when we left, and I’m going to throw it in because it’s the best bread pudding I’ve ever eaten. It tastes like caramelized mush. Cream 2 cups sugar with 2 sticks butter. Then add 2 ½ cups milk, one 13-ounce can evaporated milk, 2 tablespoons nutmeg, 2 tablespoons vanilla, a loaf of wet bread in chunks and pieces (any bread will do, the worse the better) and 1 cup raisins. Stir to mix. Pour into a deep greased casserole and bake at 350° for 2 hours, stirring after the first hour. Serve warm with hard sauce.

You know how old you have to be before you stop wanting to fuck strangers?’ said Arthur. ‘Dead, that’s how old. It doesn’t stop. It doesn’t go away. You put all this energy into suppressing it and telling yourself it’s worth it because of what you get in exchange, and then one day someone brushes up against you and you’re fourteen years old again and all you want to do is go to a drive-in movie and fuck her brains out in the back seat. But you don’t do it because you’re not going to be that kind of person, so you go home, and there’s your wife, and she wears socks to bed.

As for the linguine alla cecca, it’s a hot pasta with a cold tomato and basil sauce, and it’s so light and delicate that it’s almost like eating a salad. It has to be made in the summer, when tomatoes are fresh. Drop 5 large tomatoes into boiling water for one full minute. Peel and seed and chop. Put into a large bowl with ½ cup olive oil, a garlic clove sliced in two, 1 cup chopped fresh basil leaves, salt and hot red pepper flakes. Let sit for a couple of hours, then remove the garlic. Boil one pound of linguine, drain and toss with the cold tomato mixture. Serve immediately.

In the end, I always want potatoes. Mashed potatoes. Nothing like mashed potatoes when you're feeling blue...The problem with mashed potatoes, though, is that they require almost as much hard work as crisp potatoes, and when you're feeling blue the last thing you feel like is hard work. Of course, you can always get someone to make the mashed potatoes for you, but let's face it: the reason you're blue is that there isn't anyone to make them for you. As a result, most people do not have nearly enough mashed potatoes in their lives, and when they do, it's almost always at the wrong time.

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 the only reason love is essential is that otherwise you spend all your time looking for it.

There are two kinds of crisp potatoes that I prefer above all others. The first are called Swiss potatoes, and they're essentially a large potato pancake of perfect hash browns; the flipping of the pancake is so wildly dramatic that the potatoes themselves are almost beside the point. The second are called potatoes Anna; they are thin circles of potato cooked in a shallow pan in the oven and then turned onto a plate in a darling mound of crunchy brownness. Potatoes Anna is a classic French recipe, but there is something so homely and old-fashioned about them that they can usually be passed off as either an ancient family recipe or something you just made up.

She had lunch with Betty yesterday," said Mark, "and Betty told her you said she had herpes." "I never said herpes," I said. "You must have said something," said Mark. "I said she had an infection," I said. "Well, she's furious at you," said Mark. "She's furious at me," I said. "That's rich." All my life I had wanted to say, "That's rich." Now I finally had gotten my chance. "That's really rich," I said. "Listen, you bastard. You tell Thelma that if she keeps calling here, I'll tell Betty she has the clap." "Clap hands," said Sam, and clapped his hands together. "I'll get it into the Ear, too," I said. "What hopelessly tall and ungainly Washington hostess has a social disease, and we don't mean her usual climbing?

Sam threw up on Mark's new blazer. "Shit," said Mark. "I'm sorry," I said. Sam started to cry. There was a kind of odd murmur in the seats around us, as the smell began to penetrate to the adjoining rows. At any moment the murmur would probably build to a hiss, and then a chorus of boos, and ultimately Sam and I would be stoned to death with Bic pens. "What am I apologizing for?" I said. "It's not my fault." "I know it's not," said Mark. "I'm sorry." "It's not your fault either," I said. "This whole thing is my fault," he said. "If you really believed that, you would have paid my shuttle fare," I said. I picked up Sam and stood up to go to the bathroom with him. Mark began to wipe off his blazer with his handkerchief. "You bought that blazer with Thelma Rice, didn't you?" I said, and started for the back. I didn't even have to hear the answer. Mark's impulse to fall in love is always accompanied by his impulse to purchase clothes with the loved one looking on.

The Things They Carried has sold over two million copies internationally, won numerous awards, and is an English classroom staple. Isabel Allende was the first writer to hold me inside a sentence, rapt and wondrous. It's no surprise that her most transformative writing springs from personal anguish. Her first book, The House of the Spirits, began as a letter to her dying grandfather whom she could not reach in time. Eva Luna, one of my favorite novels, is about an orphan girl who uses her storytelling gift to survive and thrive amid trauma, and Allende refers to the healing power of writing in many of her interviews. Allende's books have sold over fifty-six million copies, been translated into thirty languages, and been made into successful plays and movies. Such is the power of mining your deep. Jeanette Winterson acknowledges that her novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is her own story of growing up gay in a fundamentalist Christian household in the 1950s. She wrote it to create psychic space from the trauma. In her memoir, she writes of Oranges, “I wrote a story I could live with. The other one was too painful. I could not survive it.” Sherman Alexie, who grew up in poverty on an Indian reservation that as a child he never dreamed he could leave, does something similar in his young adult novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian, named one of the “Best Books of 2007” by School Library Journal. He has said that fictionalizing life is so satisfying because he can spin the story better than real life did. Nora Ephron's roman à clef Heartburn is a sharply funny, fictionalized account of Ephron's own marriage to Carl Bernstein. She couldn't control his cheating during her pregnancy or the subsequent dissolution of their marriage, but through the novelization of her experience, she got to revise the ending of that particular story. In Heartburn, Rachel, the character based on Ephron, is asked

My mother taught me many things when I was growing up, but the main thing I learned from her is that everything is copy. She said it again and again, and I have quoted her saying it again and again. As a result, I knew the moment my marriage ended that someday it might make a book – if I could just stop crying. One of the things I’m proudest of is that I managed to convert an event that seemed to me hideously tragic at the time to a comedy – and if that’s not fiction, I don’t know what is.

this,

Unfortunately, the lesson he learned wasn't the one I had in mind: what he learned is that he could do anything, and in the end there was a chance I'd take him back.

it crossed my mind that he might be crazy. I sat there on the couch with tears rolling down my face and my fat belly resting on my thighs, I screwed up

Two of us liked dark meat and two of us liked light meat and together we made a chicken.

I think you often have that sense when you write—that if you can spot something in yourself and set it down on paper, you’re free of it. And you’re not, of course; you’ve just managed to set it down on paper, that’s all.

Mark, and I didn’t really like Helen—that was the complication. Helen is one of those people who never say anything, not because she’s shy but because she’s learned—in a way I always mean to—that if you don’t say anything, you make people far more nervous and self-conscious and careful around you than if you do.

Do you believe in love?” he said. 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 the only reason love is essential is that otherwise you spend all your time looking for it. “Yes,” I said. “I do.

The tears poured from my eyes as I lit on the image, and the only thing that might have made it even more satisfyingly melodramatic and masochistic would have been to be lying in the bathtub; nothing like crying in the tub for real self-pity, nothing like the moment when every last bit of you is wet, and wiping the tears from your eyes only means making your face even wetter.

When Charlie and I were married, I was twenty-five years and eleven months old, and I was such a ninny that I thought: Thank God I’m getting married now, before I’m twenty-six and washed up.

We had driven miles to find the world's creamiest cheesecake and the world's largest pistachio nut and the world's sweetest corn on the cob. We had spent hours in blind taste testings of kosher hot dogs and double chocolate chip ice cream. When Julie went home to Fort Worth, she flew back with spareribs from Angelo's Beef Bar-B-Q, and when I went to New York, I flew back with smoked butterfish from Russ and Daughters. Once, in New Orleans, we all went to Mosca's for dinner, and we ate marinated crab, baked oysters, barbecued shrimp, spaghetti bordelaise, chicken with garlic, sausage with potatoes, and on the way back to town, a dozen oysters each at the Acme and beignets and coffee with chicory on the wharf. Then Arthur said, "Let's go to Chez Helene for the bread pudding," and we did, and we each had two. The owner of Chez Helene gave us the bread pudding recipe when we left, and I'm going to throw it in because it's the best bread pudding recipe I've ever eaten. It tastes like caramelized mush. Cream 2 cups sugar with 2 sticks butter. Then add 2 1/2 cups milk, one 13-ounce can evaporated milk, 2 tablespoons nutmeg, 2 tablespoons vanilla, a loaf of wet bread in chunks and pieces (any bread will do, the worse the better) and 1 cup raisins. Stir to mix. Pour into a deep greased casserole and bake at 350* for 2 hours, stirring after the first hour. Serve warm with hard sauce.