Literary Birthday – 19 May – Nora Ephron

Nora Ephron was born 19 May 1941, and died 26 June 2012.

10 Quotes

1. Insane people are always sure that they are fine. It is only the sane people who are willing to admit that they are crazy.
2. The hardest thing about writing is writing.
3. 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.
4. I try to write parts for women that are as complicated and interesting as women actually are.
5. 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.
6. If pregnancy were a book they would cut the last two chapters.
7. Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.
8. I don’t have much of a routine. I go through periods where I work a great deal at all hours of the day whenever I am around a typewriter, and then I go through spells where I don’t do anything. I just sort of have lunch—all day. I never have been able to stick to a schedule. I work when there is something due or when I am really excited about a piece.
9. First of all, whatever you do, work in a field that has something to do with writing or publishing. So you will be exposed to what people are writing about and how they are writing, and as important, so you will be exposed to people in the business who will get to know you and will call on you if they are looking for someone for a job.
10. Secondly, you have to write. And if you don’t have a job doing it, then you have to sit at home doing it.

Nora Ephron was an American journalist, essayist, playwright, screenwriter, novelist, producer, director, and blogger. She is best known for her romantic comedies and was nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Writing (Original Screenplay): for Silkwood,  When Harry Met Sally…, and Sleepless in Seattle. She is the author of I Remember Nothing: and Other Reflections.

Source for Image

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nora_Ephron.jpg

David Shankbone, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

by Amanda Patterson

Are you interested in more authors’ birthdays? Click here for our Literary Birthday Calendar

{6}