best nora ephron essays

Every Nora Ephron Book That Should Be on Your Shelf

Beginning with I Feel Bad About My Neck .

Our editors handpick the products that we feature. We may earn commission from the links on this page.

I Feel Bad About My Neck

In this 2006 book, Nora Ephron got candid about the harsh yet glorious truth that is aging. “Your neck is the thing saying, ‘Don’t kid yourself.’ You can put spackle on your face, basically, but this is the thing that is saying, ‘Uh-oh.’” In other words, the neck doesn’t lie. And neither does Nora. She goes on to share other truths, too, about women and getting older.

I Remember Nothing

I Remember Nothing is full of anecdotal gifts you will never forget. A singular voice, Ephron reflects on the early days of her career—memories of her time working as a mail girl at Newsweek and writing for Esquire —while taking every opportunity to get real about her life at the time she was penning this memoir, making sure to leave no “senior moment” unturned.

Cookbook author Rachel Samstat just learned news that would make even the sweetest soufflé taste sour: Her husband’s having an affair. Oh, did we mention she’s seven months pregnant and the mistress is a swanlike beauty with legs for days? A comedy with a side of misery, this one’s begging for the screen treatment. Which it received in 1986, starring cinema royalty Meryl Streep in the lead.

When Harry Met Sally…

Technically a screenplay published as a novel, When Harry Met Sally… needs no introduction. A smash-hit the day it was released into theaters in 1989, Nora Ephron’s witty banter and “I’ll have what she’s having” big-O scene plays out even better between two covers. And bonus: There’s an introduction by the author.

Imaginary Friends

Nora Ephron uses Lillian Hellman and Mary McCarthy, both novelists and activists who died in the early 1900s, as a springboard for her Imaginary Friends play hailed as “wickedly funny” and “sharp-eyed and even sharper-clawed.” Basically, Ephron creates an imaginary world in which the two women go at each other and air their grievances. In hilarious form, of course.

Crazy Salad and Scribble Scribble

No topic was barred from the sharp wit scribbled with Nora Ephron’s pen. From politics to Pillsbury, she covered it all during her career, be it as a novelist, a magazine writer, or screenplay scripter. With Crazy Salad and Scribble Scribble , we get a slice of Ephron’s classic essay collections, including “A Few Words About Breasts” and “The New Porn.”

Wallflower at the Orgy

She had us at the title. A suggestive collective of magazine essays, Wallflower at the Orgy was first published in 1970 and includes her first writings, according to the book’s preface, which was written by Ephron. She writes about how over time working as a reporter, she found her first-person voice, transforming her from “wallflower at the orgy” into “life of the party.”

The Most of Nora Ephron

Think of The Most of Nora Ephron as a big book of everything you already love about the acute author, bound together into one tome begging to be dog-eared. You have the old: her novel, Heartburn ; her screenplay for When Harry Met Sally…, her beloved essays, and you have the new: her play Lucky Guy , a portrait of tabloid writer Mike McAlary, which was first published in this volume.

Nora Ephron: The Last Interview and Other Conversations

Like many of the selections in this roundup, Nora Ephron: The Last Interview and Other Conversations dives into the writer’s preliminary years working as a journalist at numerous publications. But it also offers fans a peek into her final interview, a tear-jerking piece originally published in the Believer magazine.

DeAnna Janes is a freelance writer and editor for a number of sites, including Harper’s BAZAAR, Tasting Table, Fast Company and Brit + Co, and is a passionate supporter of animal causes, copy savant, movie dork and reckless connoisseur of all holidays. A native Texan living in NYC since 2005, Janes has a degree in journalism from Texas A&M and  got her start in media at US Weekly before moving on to O Magazine, and eventually becoming the entertainment editor of the once-loved, now-shuttered DailyCandy. She’s based on the Upper West Side.

What Loving Feels Like to a Man

Read the First Scene of Long Island

Mother’s Day Without My Mother

Your Daughter Is Now a Mother—Who’s in Charge?

Why Every Kid Needs a Kooky Grandma

Everything You Need to Know About Colm Tóibín

All 105 Books in Oprah’s Book Club

Oprah Announces Her 105th Book Club Pick

The Award-Winning Books You’ll Actually Love

How This Styrofoam Cup Held Together a Family

How to Feel Powerful in Every Setting

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, her own story: a nora ephron appreciation.

Nora Ephron has been portrayed on screen by Diane Keaton , Sandra Dee , Meryl Streep , and Streep’s daughter, Grace Gummer . And that’s just the characters based on her life; her wit and insight are reflected in dozens of other characters she created as well.  

Nora’s writer mother Phoebe taught her that “everything is copy.” Even as she was dying, she ordered Nora to take notes. All four Ephron daughters became writers, but Nora, named for the door-slamming heroine of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House , most of all mined her own life and those around her for material. She is best remembered as the writer and/or director of four of the most successful romantic comedies of all time: “ When Harry Met Sally... ” (1989), “ Sleepless in Seattle ” (1993), “You’ve Got Mail” (1998), and “ Julie and Julia " (2009). The glossy charm of those films, and, let’s face it, their marginalization as “chick flicks,” makes it easy to overlook just how smart they are. For decades, no other romantic comedies have come close in quality or influence, despite the best efforts of various adorkable Jessicas and Jennifers confronting cutely contrived misunderstandings with Judy Greer as the quirky best friend. 

Nora was the oldest daughter of screenwriters Henry and Phoebe Ephron (their story is told in Henry’s memoir, We Thought We Could Do Anything ). They were New York City playwrights lured west to adapt established works like “Carousel” and “Daddy Long Legs” for Hollywood. Their four daughters grew up in Beverly Hills while the Ephrons worked on films like “Desk Set,” starring Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn , “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” with Ethel Merman and Marilyn Monroe and “Captain Newman, M.D.,” with Gregory Peck and Tony Curtis . Phoebe wrote to Nora at camp describing the scene outside her office on the studio lot: a special effects crew creating the parting of the Red Sea for “The Ten Commandments,” using blue Jell-O. 

The Ephrons often entertained their friends, mostly other New York writers, and Nora grew up listening to complicated, challenging, witty—sometimes relentlessly witty—people. She remembered Dorothy Parker playing word games at her parents’ parties.  Nora dreamed of being the Parker-esque queen of a new Algonquin Roundtable: “The only lady at the table. The woman who made her living by her wit.”

The Ephrons did not hesitate to use each other's lives as material. Even Nora’s son, Jacob Bernstein, produced a superb documentary about his mother, which is of course titled "Everything is Copy." It tells the story of Nora’s sister Delia putting her head through the bannister rails in their house, so that the fire department had to come and get her out. The Ephrons made that into an incident in a James Stewart film they wrote called “The Jackpot.” “My parents just took it and recycled it, just like that,” Nora says in the film. Later, Nora’s letters home from college inspired her parents to write a successful play called “Take Her, She’s Mine,” which became a movie starring Sandra Dee as a free-spirited (for 1963) daughter and James Stewart as the lawyer father who tries to keep her out of trouble.

Phoebe and Henry were not the kind of parents who came to their children’s school events or comforted them reassuringly. Phoebe would respond to her daughters’ stories of heartbreak or disappointment by telling them it was all material for them to write about. She had a biting humor, sometimes at her daughters’ expense. But the Ephrons taught their daughters how to tell stories, especially their own stories. 

After college, Nora went to New York to work as a “mail girl” for Time magazine. News magazines of that era did not allow women to write bylined articles; the most they could expect was to be researchers for the male journalists. The fictionalized but fact-based Amazon series “Good Girls Revolt” depicts the experiences of the women who fought this system, and it includes a character named Nora Ephron, played by Grace Gummer. 

Nora was in the right time and place when two great upheavals came together in the 1970’s: the feminist movement and the arrival of “new journalism”—vital, opinionated, very personal writing that powered popular and influential magazines like Clay Felker’s New York Magazine . This was the perfect place for her distinctive, confiding voice. Her essays were deceptively self-deprecatory—her first collection was called Wallflower at the Orgy and one of her best-known pieces describes her insecurity about having small breasts. But Nora’s columns, especially the series about women collected in Crazy Salad and the series about media in Scribble Scribble , are fierce, confident, devastating takedowns of those she found pretentious, hypocritical, or smug, including her former boss at the New York Post and the President’s daughter, whom she described as “a chocolate-covered spider.”  

By 1976, Nora had already divorced the first of her three writer husbands and it was around this time she fell in love with another media superstar, Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein . In “Everything is Copy,” he described the night they met: “We had this amazing conversation.” They got married and she moved to Washington.  

When she was pregnant with their second child, she discovered he was unfaithful. She packed up and moved back to New York. As director Mike Nichols says in “Everything is Copy,” she cried for six months before taking her mother’s advice and writing a thinly disguised novel about it, the scathingly funny Heartburn . “In writing it funny, she won,” says Nichols, who then directed the 1986 movie version, starring Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson . Streep called the book Nora’s “central act of resilience.”  

“She wrote herself out of trouble,” says her agent, Bryan Lourd. That was economic trouble as well as heartache. Although she had never intended to become a screenwriter like her parents, she found that it provided more flexibility for a single mother than being a journalist. So she adapted Heartburn for the screen and co-wrote 1983's “ Silkwood ,” also starring Streep as the Kerr-McGee employee turned activist.

Those who dismiss Nora’s work as lightweight because it is often light-hearted overlook its singularly radical and unapologetically female point of view. The moment in "Everything is Copy" that best illuminates her significance as a filmmaker is when Streep recalls Nichols asking Nora to provide more perspective on the husband’s point of view. But Streep understood that “this is about the person who got hit by the bus. It’s not about the bus.” Nora was saying that we have already seen a lot of movies from the perspective of the man; this one is the woman’s story. Indeed, it is the ability to control the point of view that was most important to Nora as a writer and director. In the novel version of Heartburn , she anticipated and answered questions about why she would tell the world something so personal and humiliating.

Because if I tell the story, I control the version. Because if I tell the story, I can make you laugh, and I would rather have you laugh at me than feel sorry for me. Because if I tell the story, it doesn't hurt as much. Because if I tell the story, I can get on with it.

Nora loved the control of being a director and paid attention to the smallest of details.  For “Sleepless in Seattle,” she had a door flown across country so that the characters who had not yet met would be literally opening the same door, sending the audience a subliminal signal about their rightness for each other. She said that directing a movie meant that all day people asked her to decide things—she found it very satisfying to give them answers.

"Everything is Copy" shows a Newsday headline for a story about Nora: “She tells the world things that maybe she shouldn’t, but aren’t you glad she did?” Nora was her own best copy, and it is a treat to see topics and opinions from her personal essays show up in her films. In "When Harry Met Sally...," Sally’s “high maintenance” style of ordering in a restaurant is based on Nora, and the sexual fantasy she confides to Harry as they walk through Central Park in autumn is one Nora discussed for its possible anti-feminist implications in Crazy Salad . In “Sleepless in Seattle,” Nora pays loving tribute to a movie she saw with her mother, “An Affair to Remember.” (After they saw the movie, Phoebe introduced Nora to its star, Cary Grant .) In “Julie and Julia,” the loving, devoted relationship between Julia Child and her husband Paul is based in part on Nora’s very happy third marriage.

One of Nora’s most underrated films is perhaps her most personal, 1992's “ This Is My Life ,” based on the book by Meg Wolitzer , with Julie Kavner as a single mother trying to make it as a stand-up comic.  Lena Dunham told the New Yorker that this film, Nora's directorial debut, made her want to be a filmmaker.  

On each viewing, a new joke or angle revealed itself to me and its world became richer. I loved Samantha Mathis ’ surly teen, Gaby Hoffmann ’s quippy innocent, and especially Julie Kavner’s Dot, their single mother, a standup comedian hellbent on self-actualizing despite, or maybe because of, these daughters. But what I really loved was the person orchestrating the whole thing. The costumes, perfectly low-rent polka-dotted blazers and grungy winter hats. The music, a mixture of vaudevillian bounce and Carly Simon ’s voice that somehow made the city seem more real than if car horns scored the film. The camerawork, a single gliding shot that followed each family member into her bedroom as she settled into a new apartment in a less than desirable Manhattan neighborhood. I loved whoever was making these actresses comfortable enough to express the minutiae of being a human woman onscreen.

At first, the conflict in the story comes from the character’s struggles to support her children. But then, as she becomes successful, the conflicts are central to Nora both as Phoebe’s daughter and as her sons’ mother: How can a mother pursue her passion and talent, knowing she may neglect the needs of her children? And should her children’s confidences and problems be copy for her stand-up routine?  

In one scene, Kavner’s character Dottie talks to her agent:

Dottie Ingels: I spend 16 years doing nothing but thinking about them and now I spend three months thinking about myself and I feel like I’ve murdered them. Arnold Moss: You had to travel. It’s part of your work. Kids are happy when their mother’s happy. Dottie Ingels: No they’re not. Everyone says that, but it’s not true. Kids are happy if you’re there. You give kids a choice: your mother in the next room on the verge of suicide versus your mother in Hawaii in ecstasy, they choose suicide in the next room. Believe me.

2000's “ Hanging Up ” is based on Delia Ephron ’s 1995 book about her father’s death. Delia and Nora wrote the script, and Delia speaks frankly in "Everything is Copy" about the arguments they had while they were working together. The movie is a mess, of more interest for what it reveals about Ephron family dynamics than for its quality. The character based on Nora is played by Diane Keaton, who also directed. In his review, Roger Ebert wrote: “It is so blond and brittle, so pumped up with cheerful chatter and quality time, so relentless in the way it wants to be bright about sisterhood and death, that you want to stick a star on its forehead and send it home with a fever.” Tellingly, the Keaton/Nora character in the film is accused by her sister of appropriating her emotions for public display.  

My favorite “everything is copy” example in Nora’s films is from her most overlooked movie, the very charming and funny “My Blue Heaven" (1990). It stars Steve Martin as a former mobster in the witness protection program and Rick Moranis as the FBI agent assigned to take care of him as he prepares to testify against the head of the crime syndicate. The single mom prosecutor played by Joan Cusack reflects some of Nora’s experiences. But it isn’t the Ephrons who are copy here. By this time, Nora was very happily married to her third husband, writer Nicholas Pileggi , whose book about former mobster Henry Hill was the basis for the brilliant Martin Scorsese crime drama “ Goodfellas .” Clearly, as her husband was writing about Hill, Nora was thinking that putting a goodfella into witness protection could be a funny story.  

Nora’s sons are now writers, too, both reporters, telling other people’s stories. But in writing about her death for the New York Times and telling Nora’s story in “Everything is Copy,” Jacob Bernstein tells his own as well. We see him talking to his father about the divorce and the many-year fight that followed, which included a negotiation for joint custody in exchange for allowing Nora to make the movie “ Heartburn .” The agreement filed with the court even included a clause ensuring that Bernstein would be portrayed as a good father in the film, so the film did not just reflect her life; it was shaped by it. In "Everything is Copy," a s Jacob mulls his grandmother’s famous phrase, and the private illness of his usually open-book mother, another generation of family writers expresses how their personal experiences can be illuminating for us, too. 

Nell Minow is the Contributing Editor at RogerEbert.com.

Latest blog posts

Cannes 2024: Megalopolis

Cannes 2024: Kinds of Kindness; Oh, Canada; Scénarios

Book Excerpt: Hollywood Pride by Alonso Duralde

Cannes 2024: Megalopolis, Bird, The Damned, Meeting with Pol Pot

Latest reviews.

Back to Black

Peyton robinson.

The Strangers: Chapter 1

Brian tallerico.

The Big Cigar

Robert daniels.

You Can't Run Forever

Glenn Kenny

Three Rules for Middle-Age Happiness

Gather friends and feed them, laugh in the face of calamity, and cut out all the things––people, jobs, body parts––that no longer serve you.

This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic , Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here.       

“The only thing a uterus is good for after a certain point is causing pain and killing you. Why are we even talking about this?” Nora jams a fork into her chopped chicken salad, the one she insisted I order as well. “If your doctor says it needs to come out, yank it out.” Nora speaks her mind the way others breathe: an involuntary reflex, not a choice. (Obviously, all dialogue here, including my own, is recorded from the distortion field of memory.)

“But the uterus …” I say, spearing a slice of egg. “It’s so …”

“Symbolic?”

“Yes. Don’t roll your eyes.”

“I’m not rolling my eyes.” She leans in. “I’m trying to get you to face a, well, it’s not even a hard truth. It’s an easy one. Promise me the minute you leave this lunch you’ll pick up the phone and schedule the hysterectomy today. Not tomorrow. Today .”

“Why the rush?”

“Why the hesitation?” Nora has leukemia. She knows this. I do not.

Ten years earlier, Nora had cold-called my home, annoyed that she’d had to get my number through a friend. Throughout her life, if you dialed 411 and asked for her home number, you’d get it. “Why would you ever not be listed?” she’d said. “What if someone needs to get in touch with you?” But first she said, “Hi, Deb, this is Nora Ephron. I loved your memoir, and I’d like to take you out to lunch.”

“Yeah, right,” I said. “And I’m Joan of Arc.” I assumed it was a friend, mimicking her voice. Nora was my superhero. Screenwriter, director, novelist, humorist, essayist, journalist—Nora did all the things I wanted to do but better, faster, stronger. I saw Heartburn three times when it first came out; When Harry Met Sally , too many times to count.

“No, Deb. This is Nora. And I’d like to invite you to lunch.”

I froze. It was her. Nora effing Ephron. On the other end of my phone. So what does one say to the woman whose work you’ve admired your entire life? For starters, not this: “Ummmm …”

“Are you still there?” said Nora.

A long, uncomfortable pause. “Sorry. Lunch. Yes!”

I’d been clutching a roll of bubble wrap when she called, staring at a wall of family photos that needed to come down. Our dark 1.5-bedroom was located over a parking garage that overheated every summer, rendering the kitchen tiles too hot for bare feet. Its windows framed the last stop of the M79 bus route. Buses idled there 24/7, blasting a toxic cloud of metaphor into the master bedroom.

Moving boxes were everywhere. My husband and I were eight years into our marriage, six years into parenthood, and five days away from seeing whether more light, air, and space could keep our marriage from collapsing. Our new living room, bright and fume-free, had an oblique view of the Twin Towers. Until it didn’t.

Now, a decade later, Nora’s my go-to person on every topic: Couches, she tells me, should be white; tables, round; emails, short; lunches, long. “You don’t need it anymore,” she says, still harping on about my uterus. “It served you well, but that part of your life is over.”

She’s right. I’m 45, I have three children––two teenagers and a preschooler––and I’m not planning on having any more. And yet: Who am I without my uterus?

“How great is this chicken salad?” says Nora.

“Delicious.”

Our lunches have become a monthly fixture, to which Nora often arrives bearing gifts with careful instructions for their use: Dr. Hauschka’s lemon oil (“Dump at least half a bottle in the bath water. Don’t skimp. If you like it, I’ll get you more”); a black cardigan from Zara (“I bought five of them, they were so cheap. You can wear it on your book tour. Look, the buttons look just like a Chanel”); a silver picture frame (“Black-and-white photos only. Color won’t work”).

“Won’t I feel like less of a woman without a uterus?” I ask.

“Oh, please.” Nora rolls her eyes again. “Would you rather not have a uterus or be dead? They go in with robots now. You’ll barely have a scar.  So what is this adeno … How do you pronounce the thing you have?”

“Adenomyosis,” I say, Googling it on my phone to make sure I get the definition right: A chronic condition in which the lining of the uterus breaks through the muscle wall, causing extensive bleeding, increased risk of anemia, heavy cramping, and severe bloating.

“Sounds delightful. I see now why you’d want to keep it.”

I laugh. Then I sigh. I’ve been putting up with this disease for 16 years because, like most women who get adenomyosis (or endometriosis, its equally wily cousin), I had no idea I had it. “How are your periods?” my gynecologist would ask every year, and every year I would answer, “Heavy,” but with a tone that implied I had everything under control. Why didn’t I tell my doctor I had viselike cramps and slept on a doggy wee-wee pad half the month to catch the overflow?

Every woman in a paper robe, facing her doctor, knows she is silently being judged. “Come on! It can’t be that bad,” a doctor once told me, diagnosing a mild case of gas three hours before I had an emergency appendectomy.

I’d had painful and heavy periods since adolescence, but they grew exponentially worse after the birth of my first child, in 1995. It wasn’t until just after my annual checkup in 2011, however, that my general practitioner became alarmed. A woman is considered anemic when she has fewer than 12 grams of hemoglobin per deciliter of blood. I had seven. “This can’t be right,” my doctor said, staring at my results. “How are you even standing?”

I was sitting. “I’ve been a little tired.” ( I’m exhausted! )

“Are you able to work and take care of the kids?”

“I do my best.” ( Who else is going to do it? )

“Look,” said my doctor. “We can either hospitalize you every month for anemia or you can go ahead and get a hysterectomy. It’s your choice, but not really? I don’t think getting transfusions every month is a sustainable life choice.”

“Whatever it’s called,” says Nora, “I want you to promise me you’ll get that hysterectomy this year.” Also, she doesn’t like the paperback cover design for my new novel, a picture of a woman lying on a park bench with a book in her hand. “She looks dead. Like the book was so boring, it killed her. ”

“I can’t do this anymore,” I finally admit to Nora. I call her early, too distraught to elaborate, after a particularly disturbing interaction with my husband the previous night.

She’s at her house in East Hampton and reserves me a ticket on the jitney while we are still on the phone. “I’ll meet you at the bus stop. Don’t eat. I’m making lunch.” Five years earlier, when I’d called to say I couldn’t attend the baby shower she was throwing for me, because my prematurely contracting uterus and I were now on bed rest, she showed up at my apartment with a dozen lobsters, two homemade lemon-meringue pies, our mutual friends, and her sleeves rolled up to do the dishes when the party was over.

I’ve told no one but my shrink about the darker corners of my marriage, but when Nora picks me up, I unearth all of it. Every last bone. A few years earlier, my husband was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, and although the diagnosis helped us understand both his lack of empathy and my anger over its absence, it’s one thing to comprehend the origins of our marital dysfunction and quite another to fix it. I still feel alone, unseen, and frequently gaslit; he still feels confused and hurt by my seething fury.

After the exorcism, Nora’s husband, Nick, joins us for lunch, placing his hands gently on his wife’s shoulders before kissing the top of her head. “Is this for real?” I say dubiously, air-circling their conjoined heads with my finger: Harry and Sally, in their golden years. “Is this as good as it seems?” My jealousy burns almost as brightly as my admiration.

“No,” says Nick. “It’s better.”

“Deb!” Nora laughs, standing up and walking to the kitchen counter. “He’s my third husband. If you can’t get it right by your third marriage, well … Come. Help me carry the salad to the table.” She slices thick slabs of peasant bread. “Are you staying over tonight?”

“I can’t,” I say. “I have to pick up my son at 5:30.”

Nora purses her lips. “Might his father be able to do that?”

“I’ll ask,” I say, knowing before dialing his number that the answer will be no.

“You know I’m here for you if you decide to pull the plug,” she tells me, “but please: Try to fix the marriage before taking any drastic measures. Marriages come and go, but divorce is forever.” She scribbles the name and number of her friend Joyce, a Jungian therapist who treats couples at an impasse, on a scrap of paper. “Joyce is a genius,” she says. “Call her.”

December 2011

“You’re not eating,” says Nora.

“I had a big breakfast.” Stress has eaten my appetite. Anemia has eaten my red blood cells.

“No. Sorry. You are not allowed to add anorexia onto adeno … whatever it’s called. Did you schedule that surgery yet?”

“I can’t have a major operation right now. I’ll do it after my novel comes out.”

“What exactly are you worried about when you imagine going under the knife?” she asks.

“I’m not worried about going under the knife,” I say, moving the pieces of cucumber and chicken around on my plate like pawns on a chessboard. “I’m worried about the aftermath.” The day after my appendectomy, my husband had asked me to bring him a Sudafed for his runny nose, because my side of the bed was closer to the bathroom. I fiddle with my wedding band: a new tic.

Nora notices. She notices everything. “How are things going with Joyce?”

“Joyce is great.”

“And the marriage?

I sigh. Not wanting to disappoint her, but unable to find hopeful words. “About as healthy as my uterus.”

She pauses, weighing her words. “He doesn’t have Asperger’s, you know. I’m sure of it.”

“What? No, stop.” This is the only argument we will ever have in our 11-year friendship, the only time her well-earned confidence about always being right gets in the way of the truth.

“But he’s so at ease at our dinner parties,” she says. “And he truly seems to love you. It doesn’t make sense.”

“It’s a ruse, his ease,” I say. “It’s a survival skill. He knows how to watch and listen carefully and learn behaviors. He watched rom-coms, for example, to figure out how to woo me.”

“Seriously?” says Nora, rom-com auteur.

“More or less,” I say.

“Okay, fine. I’ll stop.” She gives me the dreaded Nora Stare™: a raised-eyebrow, chin-down, crooked-mouth rebuke. “But that doesn’t mean I think you’re right.”

I laugh. “I wouldn’t want you any other way.” I look across the table at this daughterless woman who has all but adopted me and several other women. Who never judges my actions but tries to understand. Who champions my work, even when it’s not going well, and loves my children as if they were her own. Who teaches me, by example, how to navigate the postreproductive half of my life: Gather friends in your home and feed them, laugh in the face of calamity, cut out all the things––people, jobs, body parts––that no longer serve you.

After lunch, she flags down a taxi. “Are you feeling okay?” I ask. She lives three blocks away. She always walks home.

“I’m fine,” she says. She shuts the door and rolls down the window. “Schedule that surgery already, please! And be nice to your husband. One more shot, okay? For my sake.”

“Okay, okay!” I watch the blur of yellow that is Nora disappear up Madison Avenue and set a date for my hysterectomy.

“I’m dying to see you,” I write Nora, the morning after my surgery, at the precise moment when she, unbeknownst to me, is the one doing the hard work of dying. “Wanted to see what your summer looks like so we can plan something in, I dunno, late July?”

Unusually, she does not write back. Or even call. I’m unnerved. She always responds to my emails within an hour or two, max.

The hysterectomy—which, just as Nora had predicted, was done with robot arms—had lasted a little more than eight hours. I’d woken up in recovery to the sounds of the nurses whispering: “Where’s the husband? Has anyone seen the husband? We can’t reach him. Is there another number?”

“What?” I said, suddenly cogent and in pain.

“We can’t find your husband,” said the unfamiliar faces now hovering over my head. “Is there anyone else we can call at this time?”

“Yes. Call Nora, please.”

“Who’s Nora?” said the nurse.

“Nora Ephron. She’s listed. Call 411. That’s E-p-h-r- …”

“She’s delirious,” the nurses whispered.

Back home, less than 24 hours after surgery, I beg my husband for a lunch that never comes, for quiet that never falls, for help with our older son, who’s stuck downstairs in a taxi without cash to pay the fare. “I’m watching a movie,” he yells from the TV room. “Can you do it?”

I end up screaming at him with so much force, a hernia pops out of one of my incisions. “That’s it. I want a divorce,” I say. Nora will understand. She has to. I’ll call her first thing tomorrow to tell her.

Instead, I’m awoken by a series of texts from a friend, asking if I’ve heard the news: Nora is gravely ill. What? I call Nora’s cellphone. She doesn’t pick up. I write her another email. She doesn’t respond. Her death is announced the next day. Her face is all over the TV, her voice all over the radio; I have to turn off both to keep from weeping.

Her husband invites her friends to their apartment to eat the chicken-salad sandwiches Nora herself picked out for the occasion. “Why didn’t she tell us?” we all ask one another.

She’d told almost no one about her cancer, including her sons, until the end. Which was odd, as she was the self-proclaimed Queen of Indiscretion. Years before it was public knowledge, she told me and anyone else who would listen that Deep Throat was the FBI agent Mark Felt. At a dinner party, when a friend asked Nora if she was working on a new movie, she said yes but she wasn’t allowed to talk about it. Then she proceeded to spill every last detail about Julie & Julia , including the fact that she’d just spoken to Meryl Streep about coming on as its lead. How could she have kept her own terminal illness a secret?

Back home, my teenage daughter stops me as I head into the bathroom. “Mom,” she says, “I need to tell you something really personal, but I’ve been worried about telling you while you’re recovering. I didn’t want to bother you. The coincidence is just too … weird.”

“Hit me,” I say.

“Okay, so, while you were in the hospital? Like, literally during the exact hours when they were removing your uterus?”

“I got my period.”

“What?!!! No!!! That’s so crazy! Congratulations!” I hug her. I kiss her. The torch has been passed. Life goes on. What comes out of me can only be described as craughing: that combination of crying and laughter. “Do you have everything you need? I’m so sorry I wasn’t here for that. Do you even know how to use a—”

“Mom! Oh my God, stop. Yes. I’m the last one of my friends to get it. They taught me everything.”

“Okay, okay, but promise me one thing,” I say, channeling Nora.

“Sure,” she says, “what?”

“Promise me you’ll never be afraid to talk to me about anything.”

“Oh my God, Mom. Chill. It’s just my period.”

“No, no!” I laugh. “I’m not talking about periods. I mean, like … anything.”

“Duh, of course,” she says, and suddenly it strikes me: Of course Nora told no one about her illness. The transmission of woes is a one-way street, from child to mother. A good mother doesn’t burden her children with her pain. She waits until it becomes so heavy, it either breaks her or kills her, whichever comes first.

This article was adapted from Deborah Copaken’s book Ladyparts: A Memoir .

When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic .

​When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

• LISTEN & FOLLOW
• Apple Podcasts
• Google Podcasts
• Amazon Music

Your support helps make our show possible and unlocks access to our sponsor-free feed.

A Laugh A Minute, On Screen And In Life

Nora ephron: a laugh a minute, on screen and in life.

Author and screenwriter Nora Ephron died Tuesday in New York. She was 71. Charles Sykes/AP hide caption

Author and screenwriter Nora Ephron died Tuesday in New York. She was 71.

Nora Ephron, the essayist, novelist, screenwriter and film director, died Tuesday night in Manhattan. She was 71, and suffered from leukemia.

She's most widely known for films including Silkwood and When Harry Met Sally , which she wrote, and Sleepless in Seattle , You've Got Mail and Julie and Julia , which she wrote and directed. She also wrote many frank, humorous essays, some of which were collected in books.

And she drew on her painful divorce from her second husband, Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein, when writing the best-selling novel Heartburn , which she then turned into a movie screenplay. It was directed by Mike Nichols and starred Jack Nicholson, and Meryl Streep as a version of Ephron.

Fresh Air 's Dave Davies spoke to Ephron in 2006, when she published a collection of essays about the challenges of getting older called I Feel Bad About My Neck . The interview aired on the program Radio Times at WHYY.

More On Nora Ephron

Remembrances

Ephron: from 'silkwood' to 'sally,' a singular voice.

What Nora Ephron Taught Me About Love In The Movies

Movie Interviews

Nora ephron on julie, julia and cooking like a child, interview highlights.

On Deep Throat

"I knew who Deep Throat was for years and years and years. And by the way, had you asked me on this station, on NPR, on WHYY, 15 years ago, I would happily have told you. I told everyone. But no one listened to me. It was very, very, very frustrating. Carl had never told me who Deep Throat was. ... I am not a discreet person. I would not have kept any secrets. I will tell anyone anything I know, and I knew that Deep Throat was Mark Felt. I figured it out from a clue in the book, and if I gave a speech with 500 people and [someone] asked me, I told them. I was like a tree falling in the forest that no one hears."

On growing older and approaching mirrors

"If I'm following a young person down the street and the young person passes a mirror, I see the fabulous way he or she turns toward it and kind of smiles and checks himself/herself out and they know what they're going to see. We don't know. There's a certain moment where you're just terrified about what you're going to see. So if you are forced to look at a mirror, you squint and then gently open your eyes to see if it's safe. And if it's not, you close them and walk on."

On Henry Hill , the subject of her husband Nicholas Pileggi's book Wiseguys, which became the basis for the movie Goodfellas

"Henry Hill, the man who Goodfellas and Wiseguys are about, in real life was put into the witness protection program. After the end of the movie, he was sent to Redmond, Wash. — the bicycle capital of America — where he single-handedly started a crime wave, because there was no crime there. And we kept getting all these collect phone calls from Henry asking for bail and asking for various other forms of assistance. He was always getting into trouble, and it was for things like jaywalking, which is not a crime in New York. But he was arrested for burglary. Burglary is barely a crime in New York. And then he would be arrested, and he would say to people, 'But I'm in the witness protection program. You can't really do anything to me.'"

• Biographies & Memoirs
• Arts & Literature

Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime Try Prime and start saving today with fast, free delivery

Amazon Prime includes:

Fast, FREE Delivery is available to Prime members. To join, select "Try Amazon Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery" below the Add to Cart button.

• Cardmembers earn 5% Back at Amazon.com with a Prime Credit Card.
• Unlimited Free Two-Day Delivery
• Streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with limited ads on Prime Video.
• A Kindle book to borrow for free each month - with no due dates
• Listen to over 2 million songs and hundreds of playlists
• Unlimited photo storage with anywhere access

Important:  Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. If you're happy with Amazon Prime, do nothing. At the end of the free trial, your membership will automatically upgrade to a monthly membership.

Buy new: .savingPriceOverride { color:#CC0C39!important; font-weight: 300!important; } .reinventMobileHeaderPrice { font-weight: 400; } #apex_offerDisplay_mobile_feature_div .reinventPriceSavingsPercentageMargin, #apex_offerDisplay_mobile_feature_div .reinventPricePriceToPayMargin { margin-right: 4px; } $19.09 $ 19 . 09 FREE delivery Friday, May 24 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35 Ships from: Amazon.com Sold by: Amazon.com

Return this item for free.

Free returns are available for the shipping address you chose. You can return the item for any reason in new and unused condition: no shipping charges

• Go to your orders and start the return
• Select the return method

Save with Used - Very Good .savingPriceOverride { color:#CC0C39!important; font-weight: 300!important; } .reinventMobileHeaderPrice { font-weight: 400; } #apex_offerDisplay_mobile_feature_div .reinventPriceSavingsPercentageMargin, #apex_offerDisplay_mobile_feature_div .reinventPricePriceToPayMargin { margin-right: 4px; } $15.11 $ 15 . 11 FREE delivery Friday, May 24 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35 Ships from: Amazon Sold by: Amazon Warehouse

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required .

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

Follow the author

Image Unavailable

• To view this video download Flash Player

The Most of Nora Ephron: The ultimate anthology of essays, articles and extracts from her greatest work, with a foreword by Candice Carty-Williams Paperback – October 6, 2022

Purchase options and add-ons

A NEW, REVISED EDITION OF THE ULTIMATE NORA EPHRON COLLECTION, PACKED WITH WIT, WISDOM AND COMFORT, WITH AN INTRODUCTION FROM CANDICE CARTY-WILLIAMS 'The perfect introduction to the iconic writer' STYLIST INCLUDING: * Nora's much-loved essays on everything from friendship to feminism to journalism * Extracts from her bestselling novel Heartburn * Scenes from her hilarious screenplay for When Harry Met Sally * Unparalleled advice about friends, lovers, divorces, desserts and black turtleneck sweaters 'It's got a little bit of everything, from witty essays on feminism, beauty, and ageing to profiles of empowering female figures' ELLE *PRAISE FOR NORA EPHRON* 'So bold and so vulnerable at the same time. I don't know how she did it' PHOEBE WALLER-BRIDGE 'Nora's exacting, precise, didactic, tried-and-tested, sophisticated-woman-wearing-all-black wisdom is a comfort and a relief' DOLLY ALDERTON 'Nora Ephron is the funniest, cleverest, wisest friend you could have' NIGELLA LAWSON 'I am only the one of millions of women who will miss Nora's voice' LENA DUNHAM

• Print length 480 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Penguin
• Publication date October 6, 2022
• Dimensions 8.5 x 5.43 x 1.35 inches
• ISBN-10 1804991384
• ISBN-13 978-1804991381
• See all details

Frequently bought together

Similar items that may deliver to you quickly

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin (October 6, 2022)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 480 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1804991384
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1804991381
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11.5 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.5 x 5.43 x 1.35 inches
• #74 in School Chalk
• #352 in Humor Essays (Books)
• #372 in Essays (Books)

About the author

Nora ephron.

Nora Ephron has received Academy Award nominations for Best Original Screenplay for When Harry Met Sally, Silkwood, and Sleepless in Seattle, which she also directed. She lived in New York City with her husband, writer Nicholas Pileggi.

Customer reviews

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

• Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

Top reviews from other countries

• Amazon Newsletter
• About Amazon
• Accessibility
• Sustainability
• Press Center
• Investor Relations
• Amazon Devices
• Amazon Science
• Sell on Amazon
• Sell apps on Amazon
• Supply to Amazon
• Protect & Build Your Brand
• Become an Affiliate
• Become a Delivery Driver
• Start a Package Delivery Business
• Advertise Your Products
• Self-Publish with Us
• Become an Amazon Hub Partner
• › See More Ways to Make Money
• Amazon Visa
• Amazon Store Card
• Amazon Secured Card
• Amazon Business Card
• Shop with Points
• Credit Card Marketplace
• Reload Your Balance
• Amazon Currency Converter
• Your Account
• Your Orders
• Shipping Rates & Policies
• Amazon Prime
• Returns & Replacements
• Manage Your Content and Devices
• Recalls and Product Safety Alerts
• Conditions of Use
• Privacy Notice
• Consumer Health Data Privacy Disclosure
• Your Ads Privacy Choices

• Member Interviews
• Science & Exploration
• Public Service
• Achiever Universe
• Summit Overview
• About The Academy
• Academy Patrons
• Delegate Alumni
• Directors & Our Team
• Golden Plate Awards Council
• Golden Plate Awardees
• Preparation
• Perseverance
• The American Dream
• Recommended Books
• Find My Role Model

All achievers

Nora ephron, humorist, screenwriter and director.

Listen to this achiever on What It Takes

What It Takes is an audio podcast produced by the American Academy of Achievement featuring intimate, revealing conversations with influential leaders in the diverse fields of endeavor: public service, science and exploration, sports, technology, business, arts and humanities, and justice.

For years, I just wrote scripts that didn’t get made. I got paid for them, but I thought, ‘Am I ever going to get a movie made?’

Nora Ephron was born in New York City and lived, for the first four years of her life, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, a neighborhood that figures prominently in her writing. She was the first of four daughters of Henry and Phoebe Ephron, writers who moved to Los Angeles when Nora was three to work in the film industry. Although the Ephrons enjoyed success in Hollywood, young Nora did not feel at home in the Southern California of the 1950s and longed to return to New York, which she always regarded as her real home.

After graduating from Wellesley College in 1962 with a degree in journalism, she served briefly as a White House intern during the administration of John F. Kennedy. Returning to New York at last, she found work in the mailroom at Newsweek magazine and was soon promoted to researcher. When New York City’s newspapers suspended publication during a strike by the International Typographical Union, Nora Ephron and some of her friends, including the young Calvin Trillin , put out their own satirical newspaper. Ephron’s parodies of New York Post columnists caught the eye of the Post ‘s publisher, Dorothy Schiff. When the strike was over, Schiff hired Ephron as a reporter. The 1960s were a lively time for journalism in New York, and Dorothy Schiff’s Post , a liberal-leaning afternoon tabloid, offered Ephron a free hand to explore her favorite city from top to bottom.

While working at the Post , Nora Ephron also began writing occasional essays for publications such as New York , Esquire and The New York Times Sunday Magazine . Her work as a reporter won acclaim as part of the “New Journalism” movement of the 1960s, in which the author’s personal voice became part of the story. Her humorous 1972 essay, “A Few Words About Breasts,” made her name as an essayist. As a regular columnist for Esquire , she became one of America’s best-known humorists. Her essays, often focusing on sex, food, and New York City, were collected in a series of bestselling volumes, Wallflower at the Orgy , Crazy Salad and Scribble Scribble .

An early marriage to humorist Dan Greenburg ended in divorce, and Ephron married investigative reporter Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame. After the birth of their first child, Ephron curtailed her activities as a journalist and devoted more of her time to screenwriting, scripting occasional television episodes and selling a number of screenplays that were never produced. Midway through Ephron’s second pregnancy, her marriage to Carl Bernstein ended, and she found herself alone with two small boys to raise. Her screenplay for the film Silkwood (1983), based on the life of an anti-nuclear activist who met a violent end, was made into a successful film by famed director Mike Nichols, starring actress Meryl Streep.

The same year, Ephron published a comic novel, Heartburn , clearly based on the marriage to Bernstein and its painful dissolution. A film adaptation, starring Streep and Jack Nicholson, soon appeared, directed by Mike Nichols from a script by Ephron. With two high-profile screenplays to her credit, Ephron became one of the most sought-after writers in the business. Her personal life took a happy turn in 1987, when she married author and journalist Nicholas Pileggi, best known for his true-crime stories, including two that formed the basis for films by director Martin Scorsese , GoodFellas and Casino .

Nora Ephron enjoyed her greatest success yet with When Harry Met Sally (1989), a romantic comedy directed by Rob Reiner, starring Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan. The film struck an instant chord with audiences and became an international hit. Ephron had seen her parents’ writing careers falter in their 50s, as they both fell prey to alcohol and the fickle fashions of Hollywood.

Ephron contemplated a transition to directing, in part to protect her own writing career in an industry still largely inhospitable to films by or about women. Unfortunately, her directing debut, This Is My Life , about the struggles of a single mother working as a stand-up comic, was a box office disappointment. Ephron knew her future as a director would stand or fall with her next assignment.

Sleepless in Seattle (1993) was co-written by Nora Ephron and her younger sister, Delia. Director Nora cast When  Harry Met Sally star Meg Ryan, teaming her with Tom Hanks. The resulting film was an enormous success, and Ephron was now established as Hollywood’s foremost creator of romantic comedies. A follow-up film, Mixed Nuts , was a commercial disappointment, but Michael , starring John Travolta as an angel, enjoyed solid success at the box office. In You’ve Got Mail (1998), Ephron re-united Sleepless stars Hanks and Ryan in a contemporary variation on the classic comedy The Shop Around the Corner . With You’ve Got Mail , the team of Ephron, Ryan and Hanks scored another huge success; Ephron’s film also served as a love letter to her beloved Upper West Side.

In the following years, Nora Ephron pursued a wide variety of projects. She made an unexpected foray into writing for the stage with her 2002 play Imaginary Friends , based on the turbulent rivalry of authors Lillian Hellman and Mary McCarthy. She took another unusual tack with an offbeat big-screen adaptation of the 1960s television series Bewitched , starring Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell. Her 2006 collection of essays, I Feel Bad Abut My Neck: And Other Reflections on Being a Woman , immediately shot to number one on the New York Times bestseller list.

In her film Julie and Julia , she returned to a favorite subject — food — by telling the parallel stories of famed food writer Julia Child and a contemporary Manhattan woman who sets out to cook her way through every recipe in Childs’s classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking . The 2009 film starred Ephron’s friend and previous collaborator Meryl Streep as Julia Child. In addition to her books, plays and movies, Ephron wrote a regular blog for the online news site The Huffington Post . Her 2010 collection of essays, I Remember Nothing , took a humorous look at the aging process and other topics.

Nora Ephron was one of a handful of successful women film directors working in Hollywood, and one whose films consistently featured women in strong, decisive roles. She lived to see all three of her younger sisters —Delia, Amy and Hallie —build successful writing careers. Nora Ephron died in Manhattan, from complications of leukemia, at the age of 71.

Nora Ephron achieved international success as a director and writer of feature films, a field that had been effectively closed to women for over half a century. Her earlier work as a journalist and essayist had already won her a reputation for sharp-eyed social observation and sharp-tongued humor. It also introduced a distinctive approach to her favorite subjects: New York City, food, and the baffling ways of men and women in love.

She was pregnant with her second child when her husband left her, and she found herself at home with two babies to take care of while trying to break into screenwriting. In 1983, her script for the film Silkwood was nominated for an Oscar, and her novel Heartburn , a comic fictionalization of the end of her marriage, became a bestseller. Ephron’s original screenplay, When Harry Met Sally , solidified her reputation as a screenwriter, but she wanted something more. She soon made her name as a director with Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail , runaway successes that established her as Hollywood’s premier creator of modern romantic comedies. Her 2009 film Julie and Julia recounts the life of the author and television personality Julia Child, who introduced Americans to French cooking in the 1960s.

Ephron’s 2006 book of essays, I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman , topped the New York Times hardcover bestseller list for over nine months. Although her subject was the aging process, her approach to the human condition was unchanged. “When you slip on a banana peel, people laugh at you,” she said. “But when you tell people you slipped on a banana peel, it’s your laugh.”

You’ve written that you learned from your parents’ friends that at the age of 50, screenwriters’ careers sometimes nose-dive. Was that what drew you to directing, the need to extend or protect your career as a screenwriter?

Nora Ephron: I think it was two things. It wasn’t just that I wanted to go on writing, but I wanted to write about things that were hard to attach directors to, if you wanted to write about women in any way.

Ninety percent of the men directing movies have no interest in women in any real way, except as girlfriends or wives. They don’t really want to make movies about them, and they don’t. So the arduous task of getting someone to commit to something that had anything to do with my life was very frustrating. Then, when I did When Harry Met Sally with Rob Reiner, I wrote that script, and I thought, “Well, I don’t really want to direct, but if I did direct, this would be a good movie to start with, because there aren’t a lot of people in it, and there aren’t a lot of people in any of the scenes, and it wouldn’t be that complicated shooting it,” and all of that. But then Rob did it, and he was so brilliant. He did such a brilliant job. He changed the script. He made it so much better than it was, and so I thought, “Well, I guess if I get to work with the Robs of the world, why direct?” And then my next movie I did with someone else who didn’t make the script better. So, at about that time, I thought maybe I should think about directing.

If I became a director, I could at least get my own movies made, my own scripts made, and the sense that I would be interested in subjects that men might not be interested in. It’s very hard to get people to direct your movies if you are a screenwriter. First, you have to write the script. That’s almost the easy part.

Speaking of When Harry Met Sally , you’ve used Meg Ryan in several films to great effect. What was it about her as an actress that kept you coming back to her for those roles?

Nora Ephron: Well, Meg can do everything. Meg is both funny and smart, and you rarely get that in one person. She’s a brilliantly gifted actress. She really is.

That script also got an Oscar nomination and is famous for a scene involving a fake orgasm. Did that come off as you wrote it?

Nora Ephron: I’d been working on this script with Rob Reiner, and Rob had told me all this stuff about guys, right? And how horrible they are and how unwilling they are to commit in any way, even to the bed of the person they’ve just had sex with for the rest of the night. So one day, we were sitting around, and Rob said, “You know, we’ve told you all this stuff about guys.   Now you tell us anything about women that we don’t know,” and it was like, “I dare you, I dare you. You will never be able to tell me anything about women I don’t know, but try.” So I said, “Well, women fake orgasms,” and he said, “Not with me.”   So I said, “Yes, with you,” and he said, “No, no, no.”   I said, “Yes, yes, yes.”   Well, he went completely crazy.   He really did.   I mean, he did a total Meathead moment and went thundering out to the bullpen at Castle Rock Pictures, where all the women were, and said, “Get in here,” and they call came in.    He said, “Is it true that women fake orgasms?” And this group of six completely terrified assistants all looked at him and went like this.   It was just an amazing moment.

So we took that fact and put that into a scene. It was a very simple scene where Sally tells Harry that, and Harry says, “Not with me,” and she says, “Yes, with you,” and he says, “I don’t believe it,” and she says, “You better believe it.” It was very simple.

We had a read-through, and Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan read the script, and at the end of the read-through, Meg said, “You know, I think this scene would be much funnier if it took place in a restaurant,” and Rob said, “That’s a great idea.   Let’s do it in a restaurant,” and then Meg said, “And then I think at the end of the scene, she should have an orgasm,” and Rob said, “Well, that’s a really good idea,” and Billy Crystal said, “And one of the customers can say: I’ll have what she’s having,” and Rob said, “And I know just the actor to play that part: my mother.” Now, you know, I had started out in the movie business thinking, “Oh please don’t let them change my lines. Please don’t let them do anything to me.” And you know, you hear an idea like that, and you think, “I am so lucky to be working with these people.”   Thank God people believe in collaboration.   Of course, I get all the credit for that line which I had — well, I’d like to think I had something to do with it, because if I hadn’t broken the news about faking orgasms, there might be millions of men still walking around the earth not knowing it, and they do know it because of that movie.

It was a brilliant performance by Meg Ryan as well.

Nora Ephron: It was, wasn’t it? She’s great.

You’ve said that despite the great success of When Harry Met Sally , you had a tough time getting financing for your first directorial effort.

Nora Ephron: It wasn’t a really commercial movie.   It would have been more commercial had it had a more commercial cast, but I didn’t have a very commercial cast. In fact, I had Bette Midler who wanted to do it, and Jeffrey Katzenberg at Disney would not let her out of her contract to do it.   I think the movie would have done better if Bette had been in it. I loved Julie Kavner in it, but I begged Jeffrey Katzenberg to let (Bette Midler) out of her contract, or for him to make it, and he simply had no interest in the subject matter of that movie and told me so.   He had no interest in what it was about, which was balancing a career and work.   It was about a woman stand-up comic, who had two children.   It’s a very funny script, and a good script, and Jeffrey isn’t really interested in women.   His wife is a housewife.   He just wasn’t there, and it was heartbreaking to me. I went through — it seemed like forever — trying to get it made, and then suddenly one day a guy named Joe Roth at Fox said, “I’ll make this movie with Julie Kavner,” and he did it.

It was a wonderful movie.

Nora Ephron: Thank you.

The next year came Sleepless in Seattle . That was a great success. How did you come to write Sleepless in Seattle ?

Nora Ephron: Sleepless was a script that had been written by three or four other writers before me, and it never really worked, but it had this amazing ending on the top of the Empire State Building that just worked, no matter what came before it. It’s kind of amazing, because the characters were sort of gloopy and unfunny, and yet you got to the end and you went, “Wow, this is amazing!” And I needed the money.

I had done my first movie, This Is My Life , which I had done for scale, which is not very much money, and I was completely out of dough, and my agent said, “Oh gee, here’s a rewrite,” and it’s supposed to happen. It had a director. It had casting attached to it, and not Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, and so I read it, and I thought, “Oh, I can fix this. I can make this better.” So I did a rewrite on it, and basically made it into a comedy, or made it into — not a comedy, but a movie that had laughs in it, which it didn’t at all. And suddenly, it was a “go” picture, and the director who had been attached to it — who had no interest in making a comedy, I guess — bowed out of it. He was gone, and the actors were gone, because they weren’t really funny, and it was suddenly a script that a lot of people wanted to be in.

It wasn’t like I thought, “I have to direct this.”   In fact, I thought, “Well, this isn’t really good enough yet,” and they kept saying, “Don’t you want to direct this?” and I kept saying, “But it’s not ready to be directed.   I’ve got to do another rewrite on it.”   I only worked on it three weeks.   “No, no.   It’s fine.   Do anything you want to.”   I said, “Well, I’ve got to bring Delia, my sister, in on it, because I need a lot of help if I’m going to direct it.”   “Bring Delia in. That’s great!” Delia brought a huge number of hilarious things to it, and suddenly — I have never had anything like it happen.   It was instant.   It was like, I think I gave them the script — the first pass in March — and we were scouting in Seattle in early June, and we were shooting in August.   It was unbelievable.

Looking back, it seems like an effortless vehicle. What was it like to direct it?

Nora Ephron: I have no idea what it was like to direct it, because all of my experiences as a director are filtered through food, and the food was great in Seattle.   That’s all I can tell you, and the sun was shining all the time, because it was summertime in Seattle. We had to — actually, of course — have some rain in the movie, and we had to bring in water trucks, and everyone got really angry at us because there was a drought, and we were wasting water, making rain in the movie. It was this movie where you just thought, “I wonder if this is going to work? Who knows?”   You know, I had no idea.

• 20 photos

Coming of Age with the Ephron Sisters—and Their Mother

• Nora Ephron on maintenance
• Delia Ephron: 13 ways of looking at my body
• Nora Ephron's Aha! moment

WATCH OWN APP

Download the Watch OWN app and access OWN anytime, anywhere. Watch full episodes and live stream OWN whenever and wherever you want. The Watch OWN app is free and available to you as part of your OWN subscription through a participating TV provider.

NEWSLETTERS

SIGN UP FOR NEWSLETTERS TODAY AND ENJOY THE BENEFITS.

• Stay up to date with the latest trends that matter to you most.
• Have top-notch advice and tips delivered directly to you.
• Be in the know on current and upcoming trends.

OPRAH IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF HARPO, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © 2024 HARPO PRODUCTIONS, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. OWN: OPRAH WINFREY NETWORK

The Most of Nora Ephron

Nora ephron.

557 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Ratings & Reviews

What do you think? Rate this book Write a Review

Friends & Following

Community reviews.

Join the discussion

Can't find what you're looking for.

Subscribe to our newsletter

3 great essays by nora ephron.

A Few Words about Breasts - I was boyish. I wanted desperately not to be that way, not to be a mixture of both things, but instead just one, a girl. As soft and as pink as a nursery. And nothing would do that for me, I felt, but breasts..

The Graduate - It was gritty and glamorous and everything I’d been longing for—to begin my life in New York as a journalist…

On Maintenance - Maintenance is what you have to do just so you can walk out the door knowing that if you go to the market and bump into a guy who once rejected you, you won’t have to hide behind a stack of canned food…

About The Electric Typewriter We search the net to bring you the best nonfiction, articles, essays and journalism

Find anything you save across the site in your account

Nora Ephron

My Life as an Heiress

The Girl Who Fixed the Umlaut

No, but we saw the movie.

Moving On, a Love Story

Serial Monogamy

Sugar Babies

Something Fishy

Dear frequent travellers.

About (Almost Surely) New York, or Something

• Novels to Change Your Whole Life
• Books with Movie Adaptations
• Books Everyone Should Read
• The Greatest Novels Ever Written
• The Most Overrated Books Ever
• The Best Science Fiction Novels
• Books No One Ever Finishes
• Books Everyone Lies About Reading
• The Greatest Fantasy Book Series
• The Best Novelists of All Time
• The Best Works by Stephen King
• The Best Horror Books of All Time
• Badly Written Best-Selling Books, Ranked By Fru...
• The Greatest Books You Were Forced to Read
• 17 BookTok Books That Are Actually Worth Readin...

The Best Nora Ephron Novels & Collections

There are times when a novel is just too much. If you're lucky enough to find an author you connect with on a humorous and spiritual level, as millions of fans of Nora Ephron can attest to, no novel can beat the joy that a collection of stories can bring. There's nothing like a great collection of essays or short stories, especially when they're from a writer like Ephron.

Though Nora Ephron may be best known for her award-winning screenwriting , fans of hers know what a special feeling it is to read one of her acclaimed essay collections or to get to know her through her autobiographical novel. These Nora Ephron books range from funny to heartbreaking, but they all share that totally original Nora Ephron sensibility, and you'll feel you're Ephron's personal friend when you pick up one of these books.

Sometimes the stories contained between the covers of these books are thematically connected and sometimes they're completely disjointed, but the fact that these different stories all come from the mind of a favorite author makes reading them a unique experience. A great collection is like being whisked through the mind of someone you love and respect. It's like having a conversation with your hero and your best friend. It's all at once easy to digest, a pleasure to listen to, and endlessly entertaining without feeling like homework.

Whether you've read them all or are looking for the next best essay collection to devour, let's rank the best Nora Ephron novels and essay collections.

Wallflower at the Orgy

1. The Food Establishment: Life in the Land of the Rising Souffle (Or Is It the Rising Meringue?)

2. "If You're a Little Mouseburger, Come With Me. I Was a Mouseburger And I Will Help You."

3. The Fountainhead Revisited

4. Makeover: The Short, Unglamorous Saga of A New, Glamorous Me

5.  Women's Wear Daily  Unclothed

7. The Man in the Bill Blass Suit

8. A Rhinestone in a Trash Can and  The Love Machine  Phenomenon of J. Susann

9. Eating and Sleeping With Arthur Frommer

10. Publishing Prophets for Profit

11. The Diary of a Beach Wife

12. An Interview With Mike Nichols

13. On Location With  Catch-22

The Most of Nora Ephron

1. The Journalist 

2 Introduction to Wallflower at the Orgy 

3. Journalism: A Love Story 

4. How to Write a Newsmagazine Cover Story 

5. The Assassination Reporters 

6. The Palm Beach Social Pictorial 

7. The Boston Photographs 

8. Russell Baker 

9. The Detroit News

10. The Ontario Bulletin 

11. Gentlemen’s Agreement 

12. I Just Want to Say: The World Is Not Flat 

13. The Making of Theodore H. White

14. The Advocate 

15. Vaginal Politics 

16. Miami 

17. Reunion 

18. Commencement Address to Wellesley Class of 1996 

19. The Profiler: Some Women 

20: Helen Gurley Brown: “If You’re a Little Mouseburger, Come with Me . . .”    

21. Dorothy Schiff and the New York Post 

22. Dorothy Parker 

23. Lillian Helman: Pentimento 

24. Jan Morris: Conundrum 

25. Pat Loud: No, But I Read the Book 

26. Julie Nixon Eisenhower: The Littlest Nixon 

27. Lisbeth Salander: The Girl Who Fixed the Umlaut 

28. The Novelist

29. Heartburn 

30. The Playwright 

31. Lucky Guy

32. The Screenwriter 

33. When Harry Met Sally . . . 

34. The Foodie 

35. Serial Monogamy: A Memoir 

36. Baking Off 

37. I Just Want to Say: The Egg-White Omelette 

38. Gourmet Magazine 

39. A Sandwich 

40. I Just Want to Say: Teflon 

41. The Food Establishment: Life in the Land of the Rising Soufflé (Or Is It the Rising Meringue?) 

42. About Having People to Dinner 

43. The Blogger 

44. The First Annual “Tell Us What You’re Cooking This Year for

45. Thanksgiving Dinner That You Didn’t Cook Last Year” 

46. Hello. By the Way. Whatever. 

47. Deep Throat and Me: Now It Can Be Told, and Not for the First Time Either 

48. The Curious Incident of the Veep in the Summertime 

49. Hooked on Anonymity 

50. One Small Blog 

51. On Bill Clinton 

52. A Million Little Embellishments 

53. Scooter, Rosa Lopez, and the Grassy Knoll 

54. Reflections on Reading the Results of President Bush’s Annual Physical Examination 

55. My Weekend in Vegas 

56. O. J. Again 

57. Say It Ain’t So, Rupe 

58. Melancholy Babies 

59. Take My Secretary of State, Please 

60. On Being Named Person of the Year 

61. Condi’s Diary 

62. Some People 

63. What Did You Do in the War? 

64. How to Foil a Terrorist Plot in Seven Simple Steps 

65. My Top Ten New Year’s Resolutions 

66. Hooked on Hillary 

67. White Men 

68. It Ought to Be a Word 

69. Personal 

70. The Story of My Life in 3,500 Words or Less 

71. The Legend 

72. Me and JFK: Now It Can Be Told 

73. A Few Words About Breasts 

74. The Mink Coat 

75. Parenting in Three Stages 

76. The D Word 

77. Fantasies 

78. On Maintenance 

79. The Six Stages of E-mail 

80. Considering the Alternative 

81. On Rapture 

82. Revision and Life: Take It from the Top—Again 

83. I Feel Bad About My Neck 

84.What I Wish I’d Known 

85. I Hate My Purse 

86. Christmas Dinner 

87. I Remember Nothing 

88. The O Word 

89. What I Won’t Miss 

90. What I Will Miss

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

1. I Feel Bad About My Neck

2. I Hate My Purse

3. Serial Monogamy: A Memoir

4. On Maintenance

5. Blind as a Bat

6. Parenting in Three Stages

7. Moving On

8. Me and JFK: Now It Can Be Told

9. Be and Bill: The End of Love

10. Where I Live

11. The Story of My Life in 3,500 Words or Less

12. The Lost Strudel or  Le Studel Perdu

13. On Rapture

14. What I Wish I'd Known

15. Considering the Alternative

Heartburn is Nora Ephron's first and only novel. Autobiographical, the story follows Ephron's path of marriage and divorce to her second husband, Carl Bernstein, focusing on his affair.

I Remember Nothing: And Other Reflections

1. I Remember Nothing

2. Who Are You?

3. Journalism: A Love Story

4. The Legend

5. My Aruba

6. My Life as an Heiress

7. Going to the Movies

8. Twenty-five Things People Have a Shocking Capacity to Be Surprised by Over and Over Again

9. I Just Want to Say: The Egg-White Omelette

10. I Just Want to Say: Teflon

11. I Just Want to Say: No, I Do Not Want Another Bottle of Pellegrino

12. I Just Want to Say: The World Is Not Flat

13. I Just Want to Say: Chicken Soup

14. Pentimento

15. My Life as a Meat Loaf

16. Addicted to L-U-V

17. The Six Stages of E-Mail

19. Christmas Dinner

20. The D Word

21. The O Word

22. What I Won't Miss

23. What I Will Miss

Crazy Salad: Some Things About Women

2. A Few Words About Breasts

3. Fantasies

4. On Never Having Been a Prom Queen

5. The Girls in the Office

8. Vaginal Politics

9. Bernice Gera, First Lady Umpire

10. Deep Throat

11. On Consciousness-Raising

12. Dealing with the, uh Problem

13. The Hurled Ashtray

14. Truth and Consequences

15. Baking Off

16. Crazy Ladies: I

17. The Pig

18. Dorothy Parker

19. A Star Is Born

20. Women in Israel: The Myth of Liberation

21. The Littlest Nixon

22. Divorce, Maryland Style

23. Rose Mary Woods - the Lady or the Tiger?

24. No, But I Read the Book

25. Crazy Ladies: II

26. Conundrum

Scribble, Scribble: Notes on the Media

1. Dorothy Schiff and the New York Post

2.  People  Magazine

3. The  Palm Beach Social Pictorial

4. Brendan Gill and  The New Yorker

5. Bob Haldeman and CBS

6. The Making of Theodore H. White

7. Richard Collin and the Spaghetti Recipe

8. How to Write a Newsmagazine Cover Story

9. The Boston Photographs

10. Barney Collier's Book

11. The Assassination Reporters

12. The New Porn

13. Russell Baker

14. My Cousin Arthur Is Your Uncle Art

15. Daniel Schorr

16. Upstairs, Downstairs

17. Porter Goes to the Convention

18. Gentlemen's Agreement

19.  Gourmet  Magazine

20. The  Detroit News

21. Ther  Ontario Bulletin

22. The Revitalization of Clay Filter: Yet Another Passage

23. Double-Crostics

24. The Sperling Breakfast

• Nora Ephron

Ranking the best novels and non-fiction books of every genre.

How ‘The Most of Nora Ephron’ Explains America

By Gail Collins June 20, 2023

• Share full article

The modern women’s movement was so transformative that it’s easy to forget the old days in the 1960s and ’70s, when the other side was good at portraying us as man-hating harpies and it was a challenge to make women feel comfortable being in the fight.

Then we discovered that in this country, a spoonful of humor could help make the message palatable. Enter writers like Nora Ephron, a fighter for the cause who was a genius at using wit to handle any woe.

“ The Most of Nora Ephron ” is a tome that includes so much of what she published, from current affairs journalism to food blogging to Broadway plays. She shows us who we are and how we got there and makes you wish she were still here to write about the future.

Nora came out of the old world; when she was a White House intern, she proudly took her then-fiancé on a tour, and when they came to the end of all the fabulous, historic rooms, he told her , “No wife of mine is going to work in a place like this.” But she figured out how to get around every barrier with humor as her weapon. Her second husband, Carl Bernstein, was the star of a famous Washington sex scandal; she turned her role as betrayed wife into the best-selling novel and movie “Heartburn.”

“The Most” shows Nora’s gift for making the enemies of free speech, reproductive rights and all-purpose social progress look silly. Which, truly, they hate more than anything.

For those of us who knew Nora, the essays are a great reminder of the way she combined a serious attempt to improve the world with dedication to creating the best possible cocktail party. Truly, we want them both. I remember joining her in trying to get deep into “The Golden Notebook,” Doris Lessing’s cerebral feminist novel, and feeling so rewarded when the discussion kinda turned into a celebrity gossip session.

In “The Most,” you’ll find observations on modern life from the personal and pragmatic (“There’s a reason why 40, 50 and 60 don’t look the way they used to, and it’s not because of feminism, or better living through exercise. It’s because of hair dye”) to the very political. “I hope that you choose not to be a lady,” she told the 1996 graduates at her alma mater, Wellesley. “I hope you will find some way to break the rules and make a little trouble out there. And I also hope that you will choose to make some of that trouble on behalf of women.”

“The Most of Nora Ephron” is certainly not all about politics, and you may find some opinions you disagree with — pretty impossible to have as many as she did and not come up with a conflict or two.

But it never dwindles. It ends in two lists: “What I Won’t Miss” and “What I Will Miss.” The things she knew she’d miss range from her kids and her husband Nick Pileggi to “Pride and Prejudice” and pie. The stuff she wouldn’t includes bills, email and — talk about a woman ahead of her time — Clarence Thomas.

Humor is a great coping mechanism, sure. And coping mechanisms are important; you have to survive the present before you can build the future. But “The Most” is a reminder that it’s also a political strategy. Pointing out how ridiculous the status quo is breaks its spell and gives us the freedom to dream up something better. Imagine what she’d say now about library book banning or the latest abortion battle or — oh, wow — the governor of Florida’s war on Disney.

Scroll for more tv shows , movies , books and songs that explain America.

Top video Ana Simões; videos by BBC Archive, Criswell Educational Films, AerialPerspective Works, Alexeynovikov, Paramount Pictures, the Stock Studio, Grandriver, OrlowskiDesigns, Stock Footage Inc., Horizon Motion, NBC News Archives, Prelinger Associates, MGM Library and The Time Lapse Company, via Getty Images

Illustrations by Braulio Amado

Illustration source photographs David Brooks: Douglas Sacha, Brett Taylor and Michael Ochs Archives, via Getty Images

Advertisement

• Search Please fill out this field.
• Manage Your Subscription
• Give a Gift Subscription
• Newsletters
• Sweepstakes
• Entertainment

Nora Ephron at the Movies Explores the Queen of Rom-Com's Outsize Influence: Read an Excerpt Here (Exclusive)

A new book due out this fall features interviews and analysis on the 'When Harry Met Sally' and 'You've Got Mail' trailblazer

Scott McDermott/USA/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty; Abrams

Nora Ephron revolutionized the rom-com and now fans and newcomers to her work alike can get a deep dive into just how meaningful her impact on the genre has been.

Nora Ephron at the Movies: A Visual Celebration of the Writer and Director Behind When Harry Met Sally, You've Got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle, and More by PEOPLE writer and editor Ilana Kaplan, due out this fall from Abrams, details the beloved journalist, essayist, screenwriter, author, producer, director and feminist's life and work.

With a foreword by Jason Diamond, the book pairs detailed criticism with analysis of Ephron's work as a champion of the rom-com and a Hollywood trailblazer. It will also feature exclusive interviews with some of Ephron’s key collaborators, including Andie MacDowell and Jenn Kaytin Robinson, to add color and nuance to her life and legacy.

Below, read an exclusive excerpt from the book that explores how Ephron changed Hollywood forever.

Think of Nora Ephron as the fairy godmother of modern-day rom-coms. After years of a genre lying in wait, she waved her magic wand and penned dazzling scripts, equivalent to charming ball gowns for women who wouldn’t take any s---. She cast a spell on Hollywood with her charming plots, explosive chemistry and leading questions about destiny and romance.

Nora deserves significant credit for the rom-com boom of the 1990s and early 2000s, which created regular opportunities for women in writing, directing, and producing and created a modern commentary on dating and singledom that connected with audiences.

The widespread critical and commercial success of Nora’s genre-defining film When Harry Met Sally and the “hooker with a heart of gold” vehicle Pretty Woman (directed by Garry Marshall ) ushered in a new era for the rom-com. (The former earned a hefty $92.8 million at the box office, while the latter became the biggest rom-com hit in history by total number 1990, per Indiewire).

Its success helped kick off the era. But a rom-com about a prostitute love story wouldn’t have landed on its own. The rom-com renaissance was driven by the quirky “girl next door” types like Meg Ryan and Julia Roberts , the anchors for flawed female heroines and their quippy lines. And Nora continued to build on the success of When Harry Met Sally with 1993’s Sleepless in Seattle and 1998’s You’ve Got Mail —a trio of canonical projects.

Richard Foreman/Dreamworks/Mad Chance/Paramount/Kobal/Shutterstock

Before Nora, the rom-com had a reliable formula: boy meets girl, boy and girl have a conflict and then boy and girl resolve that conflict and live happily ever after, with film flourishes including bombshell leads, surface-level chemistry and predictable humor.

As trends came and went, the rom-com evolved and endured a series of makeovers: the Great Depression was dominated by screwball comedies like His Girl Friday (1940) and The Lady Eve (1941), elevated by Hollywood’s leading stars, such as Cary Grant and Barbara Stanwyck ; from the 1950s to the 1960s the rom-com was “radicalized” by the sexual liberation movement and resulted in movies such as The Battle of the Sexes (1960) and Lover Come Back (1961), where the enemies-to-lovers trope ran rampant.

Never miss a story — sign up for  PEOPLE's free daily newsletter  to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer , from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. 

By the 1970s the rom-com formula turned redundant, aside from the introduction of Annie Hall (1977) and Manhattan (1979), which homed in on insecurity, anxiety and bittersweet romances. The 1980s birthed high school rom-coms such as Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club , but the allure of rom-coms had largely dissipated at the box office, until Nora ushered in their golden age.

Growing up enamored with Old Hollywood romance flicks such as The Lady Vanishes (1938), An Affair to Remember (1957) and The Apartment (1960) informed Nora’s rom-com framework, but she brought her own personal twists to the genre. She added the neuroses of Woody Allen, quippy dialogue, a sense of nostalgia and real female heroines written through the female gaze.

And, as Andrew O’Hehir noted in Salon, “Ephron’s best scripts offered the comfort of an old-fashioned love story in what felt like a fizzy, urbane contemporary setting.”

She uncovered the perfect recipe for building chemistry, often in a gray metropolis such as New York or Seattle. In turn, Nora built a distinct sense of familiarity in all her characters, which made the genre more universally relatable. She made ordinary connections—an email exchange or a voice on a radio show—feel like destiny, quenching audiences’ thirst for old-school Hollywood romance with an added layer of vulnerability and intimacy.

Nora may not have invented the meet-cute, but she sure as hell took the reins and made it her own. With meet-cute after meet-cute in When Harry Met Sally ’s vignettes, we all started to believe that love could come from a cross-country road trip or a chance encounter in a bookstore.

Reprinted from  Nora Ephron at the Movies: A Visual Celebration of the Writer and Director Behind When Harry Met Sally, You’ve Got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle, and More , published by Abrams. Text copyright ©2024 Ilana Kaplan, Cover © 2024 Abrams.

Nora Ephron at the Movies will hit shelves on Oct. 29 and is available for pre-order now.

Related Articles