Nora Ephron Quotes

My response, a dubious and hesitant one, is that it has been and may continue to be, in the time that is left to me, more productive to live out the question than to try to answer it in abstract terms.

I think you regret the things that you don't do more than the things you do.

It's kind of amazing; I don't know anything. It's an interesting way to work where you're living in the moment and making decisions for your character in the moment. You have to go with your gut on everything - try not to over-think things. That tends to make me doubt what I did, but then that's always the case. I'm a worrier. I have to accept that and just be a worrier.

Life isn't easy, no matter where you are. You'll make choices you think are right, and then suffer for them.

Sometimes you imagine that everything could have been different for you, that if only you had gone right one day when you chose to go left, you would be living a life you could never have anticipated. But at other times you think there was no other way forward--that you were always bound to end up exactly where you have.

Thinking is an experimental dealing with small quantities of energy, just as a general moves miniature figures over a map before setting his troops in action.

You know, what's interesting about Washington...It's the kind of place where second-guessing has become second-nature.

I never went to college. I think about it a lot. I can't watch a game without thinking where I would have been if I had ga head and went to college and pursued my career.

At first it seems obvious, but the more you think about it the stranger the deductions from this axiom seem to become; in the end you cease to understand what is meant by it.

But everything that I did starting out, every job that I had, I haven't regretted any of them. They've all been informative, interesting in one way or another. With a career, I think there's this idea that you're just trying to get somewhere. It's like, "Oh, okay, let's keep going, because if I do this, I can get this, I get this, this." It wasn't that way. I did what I wanted to do when it was in front of me, and I'm trying to continue to do that.

What if there were no hypothetical questions?

I think that the "what if" game is what you guys get to do. I don't have to do that. I hate the "what if" game. I'm such a believer in everything happening the way it's supposed to happen.

Pondering is a little like considering and a little like thinking, but looser. To ponder, one must let the facts roll around the rim of the mind's roulette wheel, coming to settle in whichever slot they feed pulled to.

I mean how do you know what you're going to do till you do it? The answer is, you don't. I think I am, but how do I know? I swear it's a stupid question.

I think when you have doubts, you just say no.

We make messes of our lives, but every now and then, we manage to do something that's exactly right. The challenge is figuring out which is which.

I think it's the strange irony that we make all these life choices before we're 40, because really we shouldn't make any until we're 40. It almost feels like you get a software upgrade and you start to experience life in such a different way, because you just don't suffer fools, you go straight for what means something and what feels good, and you stop caring about pleasing other people.

Whenever you make a big decision in life, at least any decision where you have a viable alternative, there is an inevitable uneasy aftermath. Anxiety is merely a sign that you're taking something seriously.

The life of man is like a game with dice; if you don't get the throw you want, you must show your skill in making the best of the throw you get.

Then he [The Star Child] waited, marshaling his thoughts and brooding over his still untested powers. For though he was master of the world, he was not quite sure what to do next. But he would think of something.

In my life I think I made really solid decisions, and I would stand by them all over again.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help make the big choices in life. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.

The trails of the world be countless, and most of the trails be tried; You tread on the heels of the many, till you come where the ways divide;And one lies safe in the sunlight, and the other is dreary and wan,But you look aslant at the Lone Trail, and the Lone Trail lures you on.

Fate is strange, and our destinies can be shaped by very small decisions.

Sometimes I think we can tell how important it is to risk by how dangerous it is to do so.