I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman

by Nora Ephron

There are a couple of old boyfriends whom I always worry about bumping into, but there’s no chance—if I ever did—that I would recognize either of them. On top of which they live in other cities. But the point is that I still think about them every time I’m tempted to leave the house without eyeliner.

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

Reading is one of the main things I do. Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel 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.

What failure of imagination had caused me to forget that life was full of other possibilities, including the possibility that eventually I would fall in love again?

Was I really in love, or was I just pretending he was the man of my dreams? Was I really in love, or was I just desperate?

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

You can’t be friends with people who call after 11 p.m. Block everyone on your instant mail.

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.