The choice to inject botox into one’s face is not an indication of one’s character.
I feel really really good about my neck. “There are turkey gobbler necks. There are elephant necks. There are necks with wattles and necks with creases that are on the verge of becoming wattles” among others. Apparently all of this appalling neck transformation starts at around age 43. So I feel really good about my age and consequently my neck.
Everything really is copy, Ephron writes. And then she goes on to show how she and her sister, Delia, also a writer, used episodes in their private lives in their work. I’m starting to think pain is material waiting to become a joke.
The choice to inject botox into one’s face is not an indication of one’s character. This one is hard to digest because it’s tempting to think that one virtue encourage another. That intelligent, funny, creative, generous people would never do such things. Nora did and so have many other people. Nora was still intelligent, funny, and –I never met her but I feel like she might have been generous and I always lean toward overestimation when in doubt. Once, an acquaintance of mine wrote in her About section on Facebook: Don’t judge me by my Facebook Page. I guess I’m saying, don’t judge – well not me, I’ll never do botox. I like to laugh way too much to skip it even for one day but – don’t judge anyone else by their face.
Cookbooks are overrated. I like to cook but I severely censure the worship of cookbooks. Except, Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi. Every rule has an exception (or five if it’s a Spanish grammatical rule).
Remember that birthing video you saw in Biology class freshman year of high school? And you thought, oh my God, this is the most ridiculous, absurd decision anyone could ever make. You were correct. But, you’ll probably do it because love is unreasonable.
Everyone has an opinion about Bill Clinton. And they want everyone else to know. Nora had an opinion about Bill Clinton and she wrote it. But what does Bill Clinton think about Bill Clinton? I want to hear him tell it.
When running out of subjects for writing, choose a body part. Ephron wrote a popular piece about having small breasts.
You need to get to know some people in the city where you live because if you don’t you might “die one of those New York deaths where nobody notices for two weeks until the smell drifts out into the hallway.”
A book is a thing that changes when you change. A book is a thing that stays the same even though you’ve changed.
Considering the fact that you must eat something to stay alive, why not enjoy it? Really. Enjoy it.
“I Feel Bad About My Neck And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman” is one of Ephron’s 5 essay collections. She wrote When Harry Met Sally… and then some ( Julie & Julia, Sleepless in Seatle, You’ve Got Mail, Heartburn, etc.) because she realized that she was not going to be a heiress after all. So, poverty can be very motivating.
