Media Platforms Design Team

You should spend all day today reading Nora Ephron. Remember that stupid debate about whether women could be funny or not? "Nora Ephron" were the last two words of that argument. She was, to writing, what the five tools player is to baseball: great novelist, great screenwriter, great playwright, great columnist, great interview. But above all she was a a creator of maxims. Is there any other writer of her generation who was so quoted? I heard most of her best lines from friends or my parents before I read them in books or saw them in theaters. She spoke true things so simply and so elegantly that they stuck forever, and became indistinguishable from folk wisdom. A few of her best:

"Never marry a man you wouldn't want to be divorced from."

"If pregnancy were a book, they would cut the last two chapters."

"Having a baby is like throwing a hand grenade into a marriage."

"I don't think any day is worth living without thinking about what you're going to eat next at all times."

"Insane people are always sure that they are fine. It is the sane people who are willing to admit that they are crazy."

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

"Men dominate the conversations in Washington and therefore, as far as I am concerned, the conversations are far less interesting that those in New York."

"I am continually fascinated at the difficulty intelligent people have in distinguishing what is controversial from what is merely offensive."

"In my sex fantasy, nobody ever loves me for my mind."

About New York: "I look out the window and I see the lights and the skyline and the people in the street rushing around looking for action, love, and the world's greatest chocolate chip cookie."

"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."

"Sometimes I think that not having to worry about your hair is the secret upside of death."

And last, her wishes for her funeral: "I want everyone to be basket cases."

That's enough wisdom for any lifetime.

LISA TADDEO: Nora Ephron Was Better Than One of Them

TOM JUNOD: Nora Ephron's Afterlife

TOM CHIARELLA: Nora Ephron, Everything Woman

CHARLES P. PIERCE: Nora Ephron and the Rowdies at the Brim

AND DON'T FORGET: ...What She Was Having

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