‘You’ve Got Mail’ wasn’t quite a blockbuster when released, but it’s stood the test of time for those of us hopeless romantics, book lovers, and fans of New York, dogs, and coffee. //

Nora Ephron was an essayist, novelist, and director. She directed “You’ve Got Mail,” but was perhaps better known for directing “When Harry Met Sally” and “Sleepless in Seattle” (you see a theme here) and the adorable foodie love story “Julie and Julia.” Nominated for several Academy Awards for Best Writing, Ephron was the epitome of talent, wit, grace, and humor.

'Everything is copy,’ her mother once said, and she and her husband proved it by turning the college-age Nora into a character in a play, later a movie, ‘Take Her, She’s Mine.’ The lesson was not lost on Ms. Ephron, who seldom wrote about her own children but could make sparkling copy out of almost anything else: the wrinkles on her neck, her apartment, cabbage strudel, Teflon pans and the tastelessness of egg-white omelets.

The obituary observed that Ephron had a gift for writing and directing about “romantic comedy and for delayed but happy endings that reconcile couples who are clearly meant for each other but don’t know it.” She is credited with saying, “Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim,” a theme that resonates in her films, whether it’s about love or cooking. //

Joe Fox says in one scene, “The whole purpose of places like Starbucks is for people with no decision-making ability whatsoever to make six decisions just to buy one cup of coffee. Short, tall, light, dark, caf, decaf, low-fat, non-fat, etc. So people who don’t know what the hell they’re doing, or who on earth they are can – for only $2.95 – get not just a cup of coffee but an absolutely defining sense of self: Tall. Decaf. Cappuccino!”