"It Was Like....Magic"

I was truly sad to read this morning that Nora Ephron had passed away in New York City at the age of 71 of leukemia.

I wrote a piece earlier this year entitled "Where I Live" which was completely inspired by a similar chapter in her book "I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts About Being A Woman".

It's not a long book but I read it and immediately wanted to be her.

Something about her, her life and her outlook on life really spoke to me, I really connected with it.

I keep it by my bedside and it's absolutely one of my favourite ever books.

Laugh-out-loud-funny, moving, interesting, relevant and written with enormous warmth.

A wonderful writer, she wrote about relationships and women so brilliantly....

there can't be anyone who doesn't in some way relate or connect to "When Harry Met Sally", "You've Got Mail" or "Sleepless in Seattle"....

fantastic movies that can be watched over and over.

She also really loved writing, books and words meant everything to her, they were her passion....

she loved reading and talked often of that feeling you have when you are immersed in a truly wonderful book & never want it to end or the joy of discovering a new writer.

I think that was one of the things I most liked about her since it's how I feel about reading too.

She was one of four daughters who are all successful writers....isn't that incredible?

If you haven't read any of her books, I highly recommend them.

Below are some of my favourite quotes of hers....

“Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel like I've accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. Reading makes me smarter. Reading gives me something to talk about later on. Reading is the unbelievably healthy way my attention deficit disorder medicates itself. Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it's a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it's a way of making contact with someone else's imagination after a day that's all too real. Reading is grist. Reading is bliss.” 

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

“I love that you get cold when it's 71 degrees out. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you're looking at me like I'm nuts. I love that after I spend the day with you, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes. And I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it's not because I'm lonely, and it's not because it's New Year's Eve. I came here tonight because 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 Harry Met Sally

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

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

“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.” 

Heartburn

“There's a reason why forty, fifty, and sixty don't look the way they used to, and it's not because of feminism, or better living through exercise. It's because of hair dye. In the 1950's only 7 percent of American women dyed their hair; today there are parts of Manhattan and Los Angeles where there are no gray-haired women at all.” 

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

“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. 
Sleepless in Seattle” 

“I live in New York City. I could never live anywhere else. The events of September 11 forced me to confront the fact that no matter what, I live here and always will. One of my favorite things about New York is that you can pick up the phone and order anything and someone will deliver it to you. Once I lived for a year in another city, and almost every waking hour of my life was spent going to stores, buying things, loading them into the car, bringing them home, unloading them, and carrying them into the house. How anyone gets anything done in these places is a mystery to me.” 


"All I'm saying is that somewhere out there is the man you are supposed to marry. And if you don't get him first, somebody else will, and you'll have to spend the rest of your life knowing that somebody else is married to your husband."
When Harry Met Sally