The amazing Nora Ephron.

Harry: “There are two kinds of women: high maintenance and low maintenance.”
Sally: “Which one am I?”
Harry: “You’re the worst kind; you’re high maintenance but you think you’re low maintenance.”
— “When Harry Met Sally”

I am really heartbroken about Nora Ephron’s death. I am one of her biggest fans, and I like I said it one day (here on my blog), I'm a very good friend of hers, but she just doesn’t know it.

It all started when I first saw the film “When Harry Met Sally” (back in 1989) which I probably watched over a million times after that "first" (In VHS, in DVD, in TV and in Blue Ray).

In fact I will probably watch it tonight -- with a glass of wine – and shed a couple of tears for the woman who among many other qualities, said all the things that people often thought.

Nora Ephron believed politicians were mostly phony, she questioned them openly about their fear of the “gay issue.” She used to attack Democrats and Republicans alike, saying to them, “It isn’t about religion, morality or politics, it’s only about the people.”

Her lists of "What I Won't Miss", "What I Will Miss" and "Twenty-five Things People Have a Shocking Capacity to be surprised by Over and Over Again" are priceless, a must-read. As well as her two collections of essays (part of my own Nonfiction short-list), “I Remember Nothing” and “I feel Bad About My Neck”. And of course, her revenge novel “Heartburn” and most of her movies, "Silkwood", "Sleepless in Seattle”, “Julie and Julia.” She leaves behind quite an impressive body of work.

She was a journalist, a novelist and a nonfiction writer. She wrote screenplays, plays and she also directed films. She had this distinctive wry voice that mixed wit, cynicism and humor, like very few writers (at least that I know).

I loved her trademark all-black attires, always buttoned up for the reasons she stated in I Feel Bad About My Neck.

Ephron wrote the essay entitled "The D Word" and suggested to Arianna Huffington, a whole new separate section on the Huffington Post devoted only to divorce. A truly brilliant idea.

About writing and being an Editor at Large at Huff Post she said, “Writing for the Huffington Post is not like 'The New Yorker' and 'Vogue', where my work is on print. Writing for the Internet is a significantly different thing with a soap-bubble's existence.”

True.

In fact, she said many things that I often quote:

“It seems to me the main thing you learn from failure is that it's entirely possible you will have another failure."

Very True.

“I'm convinced that, however old people are, they still keep trying to get their parents' approval, even if they've been dead for 40 years.”

Very much True.

There are some things Nora Ephron "loved" and I pride myself in "loving them too". She loved Barcelona, she loved speed and she loved deadlines. She also loved to write in the first person and she mostly loved telling the truth.

I will miss her columns and I will always be her devoted fan.

“When your children are teenagers, it’s important to have a dog so that someone in the house is happy to see you.”

― “I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman”