"Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim."

Nora Ephron, 71,  died on Tuesday of pneumonia.  I can't say I'm a hugh fan of all her films, although they were mostly fun:  When Harry Met Sally, Julie and Julia, Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail, and many others.  I did like one in particular though. Heartburn wasn't her most celebrated script, but for me it had a resonance that I couldn't quite explain when I first saw the film, happily married at the time, with no experience of the pain of a cheating husband. The film is based on a book of the same title, which fictionalizes Ephron's second marriage to Carl Bernstein.  In the four years of that marriage, Ephron had two sons, and it was while she was pregnant with the second that she discovered her husband was cheating on her with a family friend.  I watched the film again yesterday after reading of her death and also downloaded the book to my iPad.

It was the following quote from the book, also reflected in the film, that resonated so much with me initially and again yesterday. She's sitting at the dinner table with friends discussing someone else's failed marriage, knowing that her husband has gone back to his mistress, and is in fact planning to leave her as soon as she delivers their second child.  I quote:

"I looked across the table at Mark.  I still love you I thought . . . .  I still find you interesting, even if right now you are more boring than the Martin Agronsky show.  But someday I won't anymore.  And in the meantime I'm getting out.  I am no beauty, and I'm getting on in years, and I have just about enough money to last me sixty days, and I am terrified of being alone, and I can't bear the idea of divorce, but I would rather die than spend five more minutes going through your drawers and wondering where you are and anticipating the next betrayal and worrying about whether my poor, beat-up, middle-aged body with its Caesarean scars will ever turn you on again.  I can't stand feeling sorry for myself.  I can't stand feeling like a victim.  I can't stand hoping against hope.  I can't stand sitting here with all my rage turning to hurt and then to tears."

If you've seen the film, you know that it ends with its heroine throwing the Key Lime pie she made for the party in her husband's face and leaves him the next day with an infant just out of the hospital and a two year old toddler to begin again, the heroine in her life, not the victim.

And that's what I admired most about Nora Ephron, her ability to recognize that life goes on, that she would love again, and even if that new love failed, another would come along soon enough. Ephron's life ended happily if far too soon.  She met Nick Pileggi, the writer, married and lived happily as his wife for more than twenty years.  The secret of a good marriage she said was to marry an Italian.

My favorite Ephron quotes:

"In my sex fantasy, nobody ever loves me for my mind."

"Everybody dies. There’s nothing you can do about it. Whether or not you eat six almonds a day. Whether or not you believe in God."


Rest in Peace Nora Ephron.