Remembering Nora Ephron: Her Thoughts on Children, Aging & the Perks Of Pregnancy

“Parenting meant that whether or not your children understood you, your obligation was to understand them; understanding was the key to everything.”—I Feel Bad About My Neck

“A parent is a person who has children. Here’s what’s involved in being a parent: You love your children, you hang out with them from time to time, you throw balls, you read stories, you make sure they know which utensil is the salad fork, you teach them to say please and thank you, you see that they have an occasional haircut, and you ask if they did their homework.”—I Feel Bad About My Neck

“When your children are teenagers, it’s important to have a dog so that someone in the house is happy to see you”—I Feel Bad About My Neck

“If pregnancy were a book, they would cut the last two chapters. The beginning is glorious, especially if you’re lucky enough not to have morning sickness and if, like me, you’ve had small breasts all your life. Suddenly they begin to grow, and you’ve got them, you’ve really got them, breasts, darling breasts, and when you walk down the street they bounce, truly they do, they bounce bounce bounce.”—Heartburn

“We have lived through the era when happiness was a warm puppy, and the era when happiness was a dry martini, and now we have come to the era when happiness is knowing what your uterus looks like”—Crazy Salad: Some Things About 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.”—Parenting in Three Stages

“You are the butter to my bread, you are the breath to my life”—Julie & Julia

“Right now everything is great, everyone is happy, everyone is in love and that is wonderful”—When Harry Met Sally

“The Wonderbra is not a step forward for women. Nothing that hurts that much is a step forward for women”—1996 Wellesley College commencement address

“Parenting was not simply about raising a child, it was about transforming a child, force-feeding it like a foie gras goose, altering, modifying, modulating, manipulating, smoothing out, improving.”—I Feel Bad About My Neck