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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
My mother wanted us to understand that the tragedies of your life one day have to potential to be the comic stories the next.
What my mother believed about cooking is that if you worked hard and prospered, someone else would do it for you.
Never marry a man you wouldn't want to be divorced from.
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.
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.
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.
You never know.
'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.
I feel really bad for people who aren't insane over food.
Here's the thing about dessert--you want it to last. You want to savor it.
Don't you love New York in the fall? It makes me want to buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address.
I fly to New York to see my shrink. I walk into her office and burst into tears. I tell her what my husband has done to me. I tell her my heart is broken. I tell her I'm a total mess and I will never be the same. I can't stop crying. She looks at me and says, You have to understand something: You were going to leave him eventually.
Denial has been a way of life for me for many years. I actually believe in denial.
You're talking dream date compared to my horror. I started out fine, she's a very nice person, and we're sitting and we're talking in this Ethiopian restaurant she wanted to go to. I was making jokes, like, Hey, I didn't know they had food in Ethiopia. This'll be a quick meal. I'll order two empty plates and we can leave.
Vera said: Why do you feel you have to turn everything into a story?
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.
Block everyone on your instant mail.
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 always read the last page of a book first so that if I die before I finish I'll know how it turned out.
SALLY Harry, I can't do this anymore. I am not your consolation prize. Goodbye.
I try to write parts for women that are as complicated and interesting as women actually are.
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.
But mostly I wrote letters of gratitude: the state of rapture I experience when I read a wonderful book is one of the main reasons I read, but it doesn't happen every time or even every other time, and when it does happen, I'm truly beside myself.
My idea of a perfect day is a frozen custard at Shake Shack and a walk in the park. (Followed by a Lactaid.) My idea of a perfect night is a good play and dinner at Orso. (But no garlic, or I won't be able to sleep.) The other day I found a bakery that bakes my favorite childhood cake, and it was everything I remembered: it made my week.
Anything you think is wrong with your body at the age of thirty-five you will be nostalgic for at the age of forty-five.
I can make a case that I regret nothing. After all, most of my mistakes turned out to be things I survived, or turned into funny stories, or, on occasion, even made money from.
Reading makes me feel I've accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. ... Reading is bliss.
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.
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.
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.
Of course, everyone has something wrong with him, that's for sure, but this guy probably had something really wrong.
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?'
The truth is that most marriages have food as a major player in them, and certainly mine does.
It was personal to me.
One good thing I'd like to say about divorce is that it sometimes makes it possible for you to be a much better wife to your next husband because you have a place for your anger; it's not directed at the person you're currently with.
The odd thing about this form of communication is you're more likely to talk about nothing than something. But I just want to say that all this nothing has meant more to me than so many... somethings. So, thanks.
In a socialist country you can get rich by providing necessities, while in a capitalist country you can get rich by providing luxuries.
We're saved somewhat by Google. You can - when you're all sitting around the table desperately snapping your fingers in the hopes of remembering the name of that movie that you can't remember the name of - you can make people think that you are not as old as you actually are because you have the technology to find the answer.
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.
Black makes your life so much simpler. Everything matches black, especially black.
He was, in his way, as close to a Zen master as I've ever had, and all of us who fell under his influence began with his style and eventually ended up with our own.
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.
I hear myself saying these words: What this movement is about is options. I say it to friends who are frustrated, or housebound, or guilty, or child-laden, and what I'm really thinking is, If you really got it together, the option you would choose is mine.
