I found this extract in Nora Ephron’s book I Feel Bad About My Neck a few years back. Nora wasn’t an adventurer (in the typical sense) but she did win an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for When Harry Met Sally, was nominated three more times, wrote dozens of books, plays, essays, articles and has some very sound words of advice.
What I Wish I’d Known
- You can’t be friends with people who call after 11pm.
- The world’s greatest babysitter burns out after two and a half years.
- You never know.
- The last four years of psychoanalysis are a waste of money.
- The plane is not going to crash.
- Anything you think is wrong with your body at the age of thirty-five, you will be nostalgic for at the age of forty-five.
- At the age of fifty-five you will get a saggy roll just above your waist even if you are painfully thin.
- The saggy roll just above your waist will be especially visible from the back and will force you to reevaluate half the clothes in your closet, especially the white shirts.
- Write everything down.
- Keep a journal.
- Take more pictures.
- The empty nest is underrated.
- You can order more than one dessert.
- You can’t own too many black turtleneck sweaters.
- If the shoe doesn’t fit in the shoe store, it’s never going to fit.
- When your children are teenagers, it’s important to have a dog so that someone in the house is happy to see you.
- Back up your files.
- Over insure everything.
- Whenever someone says the words “Our friendship is more important than this,” watch out, because it almost never is.
- There is no point in making piecrust from scratch.
Buy a copy of I Feel Bad About My Neck from Wordery from £6.98. Photos from Indie Wire and O+M Co.