Nora Ephron

On Saturday while driving to my next errand I heard that Norah Ephron, a journalist, writer, wife, mother, chef, and filmmaker died of leucimia last week at the age of 71. It is an understatment when I say that I was saddened by the news. I have so much respect and admiration for this woman.

I did not know much about her until I read her book "I feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Women". I loved the book and even recommended it to my book club. It is a compilation of different essays on variety of topics filled with lessons, confessions, and revelations from her life. While reading I laughed, a lot, and pondered, a lot. She helped me reevaluate my own hopes and dreams and completely grounded my expectations, for which I am grateful.

No doubt she had an incredible life and carrier, and it seems to me she did it without taking herself too seriously and by being unapologetically feminine.

Here are a few of my favorite quotes from her book "I feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Women":

"Suddenly, one day, there was this thing called parenting. Parenting was serious. Parenting was fierce. Parenting was solemn. Parenting was a participle, like going and doing and crusading and worrying; it was active, it was energetic, it was unrelenting. Parenting meant playing Mozart CDs while you were pregnant, doing without the epidural, and breast-feeding your child until it was old enough to unbutton your blouse."


“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. "


“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.”