Hallie Ephron Quotations

When you put your characters in a dire situation, they often do things that surprise even you, so you have to go back and revise your original conception of who they are.

I'm someone who sits at a computer eight hours a day, and I look in that pinhole camera at the top of my screen and think, 'Someone could be watching me.'

I haven't given any thought to collaborating with my sisters. It would be great fun. My daughter Molly is a wonderful writer - someday I'd love to collaborate with her.

I don't think anybody in my family meant there to be any pressure for me to write. But our parents were incredibly verbal and wrote for a living. The house was full of books, and we all grew up steeped in language. I mean, our mother recited poetry at the dinner table.

As we got older, we grew comfortable in roles that met our parents' expectations. Nora was the smart one. Delia, the comedian. I was the pretty, obedient one. And Amy was the adventurous mischief-maker.

I'm sharpest early, and though I can rewrite any time, day or night, I'm useless after noon when it comes to writing first draft.

Even though I got a late start, first publishing an essay when I was 50 years old, I've since written eight suspense novels.

I'd long wanted to write about that moment when a woman steps off the career track to have her first child. For me, that was a scary time.

My rule of writing is that no one can do what you can do, so jealousy or competitiveness are pointless. I am always happy when one of my sisters has a book published that I get to read.

Everyone thinks when they start writing that they can't do it. I was lucky. My sister Delia was the most important person in terms of encouraging me.