The only way to learn is to keep doing something new, and, if you're lucky, learning with people who really know how to do it.

[Wellesley College] is about as meaningful to the educational process in America as a perfume factory is to the national economy.

The best divorce is the kind where there are no children. That was my first divorce. You walk out the door and you never look back.

When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.

So, twice a week, I go to a beauty salon and have my hair blown dry. It’s cheaper by far than psychoanalysis, and much more uplifting.

American society has a remarkable ability to resist change, or to take whatever change has taken place and attempt to make it go away.

in a socialist country you can get rich by providing necessities, while in a capitalist country you can get rich by providing luxuries.

It's always a shock to the people who run studios when a movie that is for women is a hit. They have an infinite capacity to be shocked.

That [photographs] disturb readers is exactly as it should be: that's why photojournalism is often more powerful than written journalism.

My second divorce was the worst kind of divorce. There were two children; one had just been born. My husband was in love with someone else.

I am continually fascinated at the difficulty intelligent people have in distinguishing what is controversial from what is merely offensive.

My closet is full of sad little scripts that didn't get made that have sad endings. It's very hard to get a movie made that has a sad ending.

One of the best things about directing movies, as opposed to merely writing them, is that there's no confusion about who's to blame: You are.

Some people pretend to like capers, but the truth is that any dish that tastes good with capers in it tastes even better with capers not in it.

I was always proud of being tough-minded, and I think I still am, but in my old age I've got a little softer in the head, and that's all right.

I'm religious about salted butter. I don't understand how it happened that everyone thought we should all have sweet butter. I blame the French.

I use those medical gloves that fit very tightly and are disposable for all chopping - peppers, onions, garlic, etc. Very Lady Macbeth, I think.

I am the kind of person who really will drive hours for a bowl of chili. I'm not a three-star restaurant kind of a person; I'm just a food person.

When I buy a new book, I always read the last page first, that way in case I die before I finish, I know how it ends. That, my friend, is a dark side.

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.

I was alive during the women's lib movement, and I do not remember anyone taking a position against cooking. I think they were talking about other things.

Every 10 years or so, there was a moment when I'd say, even subconsciously, 'Is that all there is?' You've got to find ways to keep it fresh for yourself.

I don't know why so much nonsense about age is written - although I can certainly understand that no one really wants to read anything that says aging sucks.

One of the few advantages to not being beautiful is that one usually gets better-looking as one gets older. I am, in fact, at this very moment gaining my looks.

My mother was a good recreational cook, but what she basically believed about cooking was that if you worked hard and prospered, someone else would do it for you.

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

I've always felt that one of the mistakes people make is that they try to do something that is just slightly beyond their skill set, and then feel they've failed.

Plastic surgery is one of the ways that people deal with the aging process. And I don't mean by using it as a form of denial, but as a kind of negotiation with it.

It's so interesting that we think we know the rules to this game, this total hypothetical game called, "Would you," "If you had it to do over." It's not out there.

It had better be quirky or perverse or thoughtful enough so that you hit some chord in them. I mean we've all read pieces where we thought, 'Oh, who gives a damn.'

Don't you love New York in the fall? It makes me want to buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address.

…the amount of maintenance involving hair is genuinely overwhelming. Sometimes I think that not having to worry about your hair anymore is the secret upside of death.

There are plenty of men who philander during the summer, to be sure, but they are usually the same lot who philander during the winter - albeit with less convenience.

I don't write a word of the article until I have the lead. It just sets the whole tone - the whole point of view. I know exactly where I'm going as soon as I have the lead.

What I love about cooking is that after a hard day, there is something comforting about the fact that if you melt butter and add flour and then hot stock, it will get thick!

My parents were screenwriters, and they had four daughters and we all write. So that's amazing. Talk about powerful parents. My mother always said to us, "Everything is copy."

You always think that a bolt of lightning is going to strike and your parents will magically change into the people you wish they were, or back into the people they used to be.

You get to be a certain age and you start reading stuff about the age you are, and you think, what is wrong with these people who are writing these books? Do they not have necks?

Beware of men who cry. It's true that men who cry are sensitive to and in touch with feelings, but the only feelings they tend to be sensitive to and in touch with are their own.

Death is a sniper. It strikes people you love, people you like, people you know - it's everywhere. You could be next. But then you turn out not to be. But then again, you could be.

You don't really have to believe what you write in a blog for more than the moment when you're writing it. You don't bring the same solemnity that you would bring to an actual essay.

When you slip on a banana peel, people laugh at you; but when you tell people you slipped on a banana peel, it's your laugh. So you become the hero rather than the victim of the joke.

Oh, how I regret not having worn a bikini for the entire year I was 26. If anyone young is reading this, go, right this minute, put on a bikini, and don't take it off until you're 34.

No man can be friends with a woman he finds attractive. He always wants to have sex with her. Sex is always out there. Friendship is ultimately doomed and that is the end of the story.

I'm a good cook, and I look at something like 'Iron Chef' and think, 'It's a good thing I already know how to cook' - because I would never think I could do it if I watched these shows.

No one is more romantic than a cynic. I do think that you don't become cynical or 'unsentimental' unless there's a core of romanticism or sentiment that's had a few chips nicked into it.

If only I had grown up worshipping Julia Child. I was already grown up - thank you very much - when Julia Child's book was published. When I moved to New York in 1962, you had to own it.

And then the dreams break into a million tiny pieces. The dream dies. Which leaves you with a choice: you can settle for reality, or you can go off, like a fool, and dream another dream.

I don't want to be someone that you're settling for. I don't want to be someone that anyone settles for. Marriage is hard enough without bringing such low expectations into it, isn't it?

Too few journalists become screenwriters. I say to all the would-be screenwriters: Become journalists. And I’ll say to working journalists: Do not stay journalists. Become screenwriters.

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