FROM TOP: WARNER BROS/COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION (2); COLUMBIA PICTURES/COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION
Enter
Sometimes I wonder about my
life. I lead a small life — well,
valuable, but small — and
sometimes I wonder, do I do it
because I like it, or because I
haven’t been brave? So much
of what I see reminds me of
something I read in a book,
when shouldn’t it be the other
way around? I don’t really
want an answer. I just want to
send this cosmic question out
into the void. So good night,
dear void. —You’ve Got Mail
ORA EPHRON was
funny. She was, of
course, funny on the
spot, which some people can be some of the time, but
Nora could be purposively funny,
which is much harder and rarer.
She had to gin up her resources
to pull that off and she was funny
on multiple canvasses. She was a
delicious, witty, whimsical writer;
a shrewd, canny observer of politics, women and men, New York,
food, children, Hollywood and
her own neck. She wrote and directed films, churned out books,
was an essayist central to The New
Yorker’s identity and was a land-
N
IN MEMORIAM
HUFFINGTON
07.01-08.12
Ephron directed
and wrote the
screenplay for
You’ve Got Mail
(above and left,
1998) and When
Harry Met Sally
(below, 1989).
She once asked,
“Do you live every
day as if it’s your
last, or do you
save your money
on the chance
you’ll live twenty
more years?”