Nora Goes Off Script Quotes

I like the way he notices things. A noticer is a person who can never be entirely self-absorbed,

If you own up to not being perfect, life gets easier.

Have you ever felt like you’re disappearing?” he asks. “Like you’re sure one day you’re going to wake up and find that the truest parts of yourself have been replaced by someone else’s plans?

The basic truth of parenting fills my heart: If your kids are okay, you don’t really have any problems. I will relish this feeling.

And second, that the best things come back. Sometimes it’s right after the commercial, sometimes it takes longer. But time and sunshine bring growth, and life unfolds just the way it’s supposed to.

To write is to re-create something as you'd like it to be.

At the corner of arrogance and cluelessness, you find the worst kind of person.

But time and sunshine bring growth, and life unfolds just the way it’s supposed to.

It’s the classic self-correcting problem. If someone leaves you, it’s because they didn’t want to be with you. All you lost was someone who didn’t want to be there anyway.

The sun comes up here, Nora.

The best antidote to old memories is new ones.

It’s about how the sunrise can be the most important thing in the world to a person who’s lost touch with his soul.

When I’m done, I ceremonially delete the Instagram app and move my banking app to the exact spot where it used to sit. I get in bed and scroll through my account. The big deposit, the interest. It’s infinitely satisfying, and I wish there was a like button to press.

and I ignored him the way you do when you’re trying to stay married.

If someone leaves you, it's because they didn't want to be with you. All you lost was someone who didn't want to be there anyway.

All you lost was someone who didn’t want to be there anyway.” Leo laughs. “Jesus. You’re not much of a romantic, are you?” “I am not. At all. I believed in marriage at any cost until that moment. Then I just let go,” I tell him. And to Naomi, “You’re not a victim here. Or anywhere. That’s what this whole movie’s about.

No, of course not. Keep the money, that’s amazing. I just don’t know how a guy who has the time to call his charitable trust and initiate a donation doesn’t have time to return my text and say, ‘Hey sorry, I’m out.’ 

My parents make me believe that some people really are made for each other and that a joyful, easy marriage is possible. Two people who love each other and are looking in the same direction can build a wonderful life.

What if I could write the story of Leo and me? What if by writing it, I could be rid of it, stop ruminating on it? What if I could write my way out of this hole?

One of these nights there will be a photo of him that reveals a trace of malice or, better, heartache on his face, and it will all make sense to me.

It mattered and you turned it into one of your bullshit stories. I’m surprised you didn’t give yourself a cupcake shop

There's nothing more shameful than this retrospective knowing, because it reminds you how blind you can be to things that don't jibe with the reality you're trying to believe in.

Saturdays at my house kind of feel like a riddle to be solved. I’ve got to get a wolf, a sheep, and a chicken across the river, and everyone must survive. Our variables are soccer, baseball, dance, and playdates. Participants must be fed and hydrated, with multiple costume changes that take place in the car.

Peter Harper! Darling, you must have an affair with him too!” “Marilyn, honestly,” my dad says.

Even when Ben was around and belittling me for selling out and writing crappy romance movies, I felt grateful for my work. I mean someone had to sell out, you can’t walk into the Stop n’ Save and trade big ideas for chicken.

Maybe what we had was a secret you keep hidden in a book to take out and ponder on your birthday. I smile at the thought because I know I’ve stolen it from a movie.

I imagine his landscaping this property like a maestro, arranging the magnolias and the forsythia beneath them to announce the beginning of spring. After a long gray winter, these first pink and yellow blooms shout, “Something’s happening!” By May they’ll have gone green with the rest of the yard, a quiet before the peonies and hydrangea bloom.

The basic truth of parenting fills my heart: If your kids are okay, you don’t really have any problems.

I want to wake him to show him the sunrise before it’s over. I want to show him something that’s not depressing because I know what he’s going to film today. It’s the breakup scene. Trevor is leaving. He never loved Ruth after all.

Hopefully the audience will recall that Ruth has given him everything he has and that he’s added exactly zero value to the marriage. She’ll play it back in her mind like I did to make sure she heard it right.

really just set out to write a TV romance for my standard fee of $25,000 so that I could pay my back real estate taxes and keep my name from being listed in the local paper.

That’s the kind of thing Ben might have said. He’d belittle the life I’d chosen and worked so hard to build like it was less than. At the corner of arrogance and cluelessness, you find the worst kind of person.

He’s been trespassing in my house and drinking my booze for two days, you’d think he could walk twenty feet and say good-bye.

She might as well hang a For Sale sign on me.

Have you ever felt like you’re disappearing?” he asks. “Like you’re sure one day you’re going to wake up and find that the truest parts of yourself have been replaced by someone else’s plans?” Um, I just wrote a movie about it. I believe you read the script?

I’ve got to get a wolf, a sheep, and a chicken across the river, and everyone must survive. Our variables are soccer, baseball, dance, and playdates. Participants must be fed and hydrated, with multiple costume changes that take place in the car.

don’t write. How did I let this man stop by for three weeks and steal my heart, my house, and my career?

You are teetering between childhood and tweendom and any single action can push you forever into the realm of the uncool.

I think he’s the best kind of villain,” Leo says. “He’s the kind of villain who does something horrible but who we still love.

I am trying to remember the last time an adult took over one of my responsibilities. Ben would sometimes run out for toilet paper or pick up the kids from school. It occurs to me now how long I’ve been doing this all on my own.

Both women look me up and down, probably trying to divine what sorcery I’m using to put myself in this situation.

Is that what’s at the heart of this suburban crisis you’re having? You want to make choices?

Ben was kind of a catch. He went to prep school and moved through life like a knife through soft butter. Ben was the kind of guy Penny would know.

Rich people, it seems, all know one another tangentially. So I guess I wasn’t surprised when I called her from Amherst to tell her about Ben, and she knew exactly who he was.

I’d come home from work and find him at the kitchen table, excited about a potential new investor. I’d cook as he shared the real-time details of their conversation. I figured he was too excited about his day to ask about mine.

You have scarcity in your heart, Nora. You’ll always be broke,” he’d told me, disgusted. I have a husband who doesn’t work and tears through money like he’s printing it, I’d thought. Yes. I’ll always be broke.

He spoke through tears and this is when my heart broke a little. I was better off without Ben, and my kids were too, but seeing the desperation behind Arthur’s eyes killed me.

And I actually might have ended up paying him alimony for the rest of his life. And then I’d probably have to kill him. So. This was for the best.

Ben grew up with that wealth but didn’t really internalize the ‘work hard’ part of the story. It’s like he missed the part where his great-grandfather shoveled cow shit for years before he made it.

Smiling children and the promise of fine wine with a terrifyingly attractive man.

but look at your life. You live for your kids, and they live for you. There’s something almost sacred about what you have. In my life, I live for my career, and all the people around me are paid to live for my career.

Okay, then, I guess he’s your problem. I’m going to “rest” in his penthouse until I hear differently. Good for you.

This is diabolical. What about the lunatic woman who schedules her life to run like a Swiss watch?” “Well,” I say, draining my glass and placing my napkin on the table, “she gets a lot of shit done. But, in my experience, it’s not exactly the kind of thing a man finds irresistible.

Luke’s a lawyer. I guess lawyers do hospice. Anyway, in three days I found out she was sick, said good-bye, and she died.

I’m a mom again. He’s leaving and I’m no longer a person who has sex all day. I’m neither beautiful nor compelling. I am Nora, and I am tumbling down a hill.

I’m a pretty good liar. I can fake my way through a lot of uncomfortable social situations. Heck, my sister’s a New York socialite. I’ve faked my way through dinners with her friends where they complain about how their nannies insist on getting paid on holidays. But in this moment, I cannot muster, “Oh, don’t be ridiculous.” I’m so raw, and the thought of spilling it to someone who might have some insight is irresistible.

Maybe he really likes me, I think in my tiniest thinking voice.

I might be an over thinker.' 'I'll fix you,' he says, and I turn around to face him. He's joking, but I love the idea of being on the other side of the fixing equation. I love the idea that he thinks I'm worth the trouble. I love that buried deep in that sentence is a hint of the future tense.

It’s as if Dr. Faircloth reached over the pond and plucked it out of the English countryside.

That’s going to be a major waste of your time,” I said, pulling crabgrass in my front yard. “No one wants to watch two hours of angst and abandonment.

Like in Battle for the Home Front, he’s telling his newly pregnant wife that he has to go away to war, and he’s smoldering. Or in Class Action, he’s giving a commencement speech at a military academy and smoldering all over everyone’s parents and grandparents

Ben resented the time I spent out there; he resented the work I did. He resented the fact that I’d been paying our bills for the past ten years. Which made two of us, actually. The more competent I became at taking care of our family, the more he despised me. The more he despised me, the harder I worked to make things right.

I was a drone, a robot, a slave to convention. I’m pretty sure it was the last straw.

Looking good, nice hair.” Molly’s that classic bitch you knew in middle school who never snapped out of it. We have to be nice to her because she’s head of the PTA and seems to have the authority to randomly assign volunteer positions.

What if this is my new normal—showing people my heart and having them applaud it?

a smile that tells me that he knows who he is and he knows he can do things.

Have you ever felt like you're disappearing?' he asks. 'Like you're sure one day you're going to wake up and find that the truest parts of yourself have been replaced by someone else's plans?

In his first film, Sycamore Nights, he gave his co-star Aileen Bennett a series of white-hot smolders that got him named Sexiest Man Alive that year. I guess it became his signature move, so he kept it up film after film, even when it was entirely unnecessary. Like in Battle for the Home Front, he’s telling his newly pregnant wife that he has to go away to war, and he’s smoldering. Or in Class Action, he’s giving a commencement speech at a military academy and smoldering all over everyone’s parents and grandparents.

The secret to a happy marriage is that you give a hundred and ten percent to him and he gives a hundred and ten percent to you.” In spite of the maddening mathematical impossibility of this statement, I always liked the sound of it.

The trickiest part of being a mom, especially a single mom, is knowing when it’s okay to fall apart. Today they will wake up to a familiar feeling of loss, the light scab they’ve formed over the wound Ben left will be dislodged. I invited

I wonder if they ever noticed how he’d double down on every misstep just to avoid admitting he was wrong.

The Tea House has been nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Original Screenplay.

You need to look like a cheap stripper in real life so that you don’t look like a corpse on camera. Can you just trust me?

So I want to leave today and then come back. Like, here.” “Okay,” I say. Okay! I mean. “Like, I want you to know I’m coming back. And if you think I’m not coming back, then I want you to say, ‘Hey, asshole, how come it seems like you’re not coming back?’ Like a normal woman.” I nod. “I should have said that. Would have saved a lot of trouble.

Characters like Fagin get to the core of what it means to be a human being—we are both light and dark.

when you are ten years old, the stakes are high. You are teetering between childhood and tweendom and any single action can push you forever into the realm of the uncool. The kids around you are unconsciously planning to ditch you in middle school, so if you’re not an alpha child you need to be prepared with a backup friend group. Being in the fifth grade is sort of like trying to disable a live bomb,

This is my dad’s favorite thing to talk about—personal responsibility. If you own up to not being perfect, life gets easier.

I mean, you’re the first person I’ve ever been in love with,” he says. Just like that. It’s a Wednesday, I think, but I’m not even sure. In a meadow dotted with trees, covered in sweat with birds chirping around us, Leo Vance is in love with me. In that second, my life is like the tea house—I can see all the way through to the other side where there’s an entirely different reality.

Have you ever felt like you’re disappearing?” he asks. “Like you’re sure one day you’re going to wake up and find that the truest parts of yourself have been replaced by someone else’s plans?” Um, I just wrote a movie about it. I believe you read the script? How many times did I wake up next to Ben and wonder, Where did I go? His face would reflect either indifference or mild distaste, and I’d try to remember back when I was a person who deserved to be loved. I didn’t know what Ben was looking at, but it wasn’t me. I was gone.

School pickup is a slow death, thirty minutes at a time.

You are teetering between childhood and tweendom and any single action can push you forever into the realm of the uncool. The kids around you are unconsciously planning to ditch you in middle school, so if you’re not an alpha child you need to be prepared with a backup friend group. Being in the fifth grade is sort of like trying to disable a live bomb,

For some reason I want to stay in this moment, ride this line, so I can both know and not know what’s about to happen. It will be the Schrödinger’s cat of kisses.

It is. You get used to not thinking about money pretty quick. But, like they say, it won’t make you happy.” “It’d make me happy,” says Mickey. “That’s because you’re already happy.” CHAPTER 12 On Monday my phone rings at about noon.

My sunroom is only big enough for a small couch, an armchair, and a coffee table. There are two ferns at all times, one dying and one getting started, on a regular rotation of grief and replacement.

In high school, my friends and I made fun of the hilltoppers’ pretentious clothes and sweet-sixteen convertibles that were invariably crashed and replaced within a month. I felt comfortable in my little house, in my faded jeans, where I knew exactly what to expect. But not Penny. She wanted to be up that hill. Starting in middle school, she emulated the hilltop girls and the way they put themselves together. When they bought new skinny jeans, Penny spent the weekend on my mom’s sewing machine tapering the legs of her Levi’s. When they cut bangs, Penny followed suit. This never would have gotten her anywhere, but in the tenth grade Penny tried out for the spring musical and landed a leading role along with a handful of the hilltop girls. After prolonged exposure to Penny’s giant heart and passion for fun, they became her real friends. The transition was seamless, making me think that Penny had always been a hilltopper just biding her time in our twelve-hundred-square-foot ranch.

Two people who love each other and are looking in the same direction can build a wonderful life.

It is. You get used to not thinking about money pretty quick. But, like they say, it won’t make you happy.” “It’d make me happy,” says Mickey. “That’s because you’re already happy.

This was going to take some time for them to adjust to, but in my heart, I knew they were better off with him gone.

I hoped my kids could feel how much stronger I was without Ben dragging me down. Without Ben, I had the energy to be mother and father and provider and playmate. People usually talk about their new normal as some sort of difficult adjustment, but mine left me lighter. I was released from worrying about what Ben would spend. I no longer needed to deflect his criticisms of the kids or myself. I was free.

It's the classic self-correcting problem. If someone leaves you, it's because they didn't want to be with you. All you lost was someone who didn't want to be there anyway.

You really aren’t very romantic, are you?” “I might be an overthinker.” “I’ll fix you,” he says,

Last month my credit card bill was $795.34, mainly food and utilities. Having full control over that number is almost my favorite part of my new life. That and being able to spread out like a starfish in my own bed.

In my mind, I was holding Ben up; in his, I was holding him back.

He gets naked in the bathroom across the hall from where I sleep, I want to tell them. Someone needs to know.

He was blind to my best qualities, and eventually I was too.

I don’t know where Kate is when I find myself on the receiving end of Vicky Miller’s pouty face.I have to give Ben credit, she really is a attractive woman.Blond and fit and nicely maintained. “I heard,” she says. “Oh,” I say, looking over her shoulder for a way out. She’s stepping closer to me and to my horror her arms are reaching out to pull me into a hug. The thought of it is unbearable. “Wait. You’re not going to touch me, are you?” “Of course. I just want to give you a hug. I feel terrible.” “Because you slept with my husband? Or about Leo?” That’s how raw I am. I don’t care who on the playground knows. I don’t care if I seem a little crazy. All I know is that if this woman touches me with her self-pity, I will die. “Nora,” Vicky says in the most maddening way, a cousin of “calm down.” Kate swoops in from wherever she’s been slacking off and links her arm in mine to drag me away. “She knows,” she says to Vicky over her shoulder. “Everyone knows, and we think you’re gross.

It was,” he says. “And maybe the whole time I was here I felt like I was borrowing this. Like I didn’t deserve to keep it.” “This?” I say, motioning to the rotting porch decking and the rusted chain on the swing. “No, this,” he says and squeezes my hand. He kisses me, and it’s all back in a second- the dizzy swirly flood of happiness and excitement. It’s last year again, and Leo’s kissing me on the porch. Except it’s not last year. It’s this year, and I’m Me 2.0. He pulls away but doesn’t let go of my hand. “So I want to leave today and then come back. Like, here.” “Okay,” I say. Okay! I mean. “Like, I want you to know I’m coming back. And if you think I’m not coming back, then I want you to say, ‘Hey, asshole, how come it seems like you’re not coming back?’ Like a normal woman.” I nod. “I should have said that. Would have saved a lot of trouble.” “We lost a lot of time. And it was horrible. No more of this stoic crap.” It’s so nice to be sitting next to him on this swing that I’m doing a lot more feeling than listening. Leo wants me to know he’s coming back. Leo’s coming back. “Okay,” I say. “You know what? I don’t trust you. Here.” Leo grabs my left hand and shoves a thin gold band on my finger. This is less like a romantic gesture and more like the handcuffing of a fugitive. “We’re married now, okay? Like in your head, just get that straight. This is happening.” I laugh because it’s so absurd, and also because I am so light. A thousand pounds of hurt have been lifted off my chest. “Okay, we’re married,” I say, and then he kisses me again. I can’t help but think this is better than any wedding I could imagine. “That’s my mom’s ring,” he says. “It was the best I could do in the last three hours. But wear it till I get back, and then I’ll get you a new big gross one if you want. To go with your marble countertops.” He tilts his head to my new kitchen. There’s a car pulling into the driveway. Leo gives the driver a wave and makes no move to get up. “So you’re coming back here? Like to live in Laurel Ridge?” I ask. Suddenly, the whole thing makes no sense. “Sure. And everywhere else. We can figure it out. We’re going to be together, wherever we need to be. I don’t want any other life but that life.

Love isn't something you need to earn. Dad left because Dad, not us.