Mindy Kaling Quotes

I had these kind of unrealistic expectations that were fueled by romantic comedies, and it has both helped me and hurt me in many ways. It helped me because, in general, they've made me hopeful. I just figure things will eventually work out for me. But nobody is like any Tom Hanks character. Nobody is Hugh Grant. No one is Meg Ryan!

From now on, let's all agree that hooking up = sex. Everything else is "made out." And if you're older than twenty-eight, then just kissing someone doesn't count for crap and is not even worth mentioning. Unless you're Mormon, in which case you're going to hell.

One good thing about New York is that most people function daily while in a low-grade depression. It's not like if you're in Los Angeles, where everyone's so actively working on cheerfulness and mental and physical health that if they sense you're down, they shun you. Also, all that sunshine is a cruel joke when you're depressed. In New York, even in your misery, you feel like you belong.

10. I will never have a husband and all my female acquaintances will.
11. I WILL have a husband and he will be like my female acquaintances' husbands.

I fall into that nebulous, quote-unquote, normal American woman size that legions of fashion stylists detest. For the record, I'm a size 8 - this week, anyway. Many stylists hate that size because I think to them, it shows that I lack the discipline to be an ascetic; or the confident, sassy abandon to be a total fatty hedonist.

When I watch roasts, I actually feel physically uncomfortable, like when I see a crow feast on a squirrel that has been hit by a car buy has not stopped moving yet.

Luckily, I was not born a white man.*

*This has never before been said in the history of humanity.

One friend with whom you have a lot in common is better than three with whom you struggle to find things to talk about.

I know many friends who loved their sororities. I wasn't traumatized. I was just bored.

I'm getting made fun of because I used to be fat? The laws of bullying allow you to be cruel even when the victim had made strides for improvement? This is when I realized that bullies have no code of conduct.

That's my advice to people. You can't get hung up on thinking, "Am I the victim in this situation?" No, I'm in charge of it.

I was just this chubby little Indian kid who looked like a nerd. I didn't have a ton of academic skills. It wasn't until I was in high school that I was like, "I guess I like writing dialogue." So that's how I got into it.

I just sometimes get the sneaking suspicion that corporations are co-opting "girl confidence" language to rally girls into buying body wash. Be careful.

I love that 'Much Ado About Nothing,' passionate, smart fighting. I love fighting with guys, and that's something that I don't get to see: arguing at a high level with a member of the opposite sex. That didn't really happen that much on 'The Office.' I just like that 'Moonlighting,' Benedick-Beatrice type of thing.

I try not to put anything political on the forefront of what I'm trying to do creatively. At the same time, I do think it's wonderful when I hear people say that it's inspirational that I'm an Indian woman on camera. My life is very diverse, and my friends are a diverse group of people.

I used to forget that I was an Indian woman. I would even forget that I was a woman. I don't think of myself as bringing to the table a lot of 'women's issues.' I don't feel the need to write about maternity. I grew up thinking that the talented people in comedy were hard-joke writers.

People ask me all the time how I got hired onto the Office. Another common question is how do I manage to stay so down-to-earth in the face of such incredible success? ... A third frequently asked question is: "Girl, where you from? Trinidad? Guyana? Dominican Republic? You married? You got kids?" This is mostly asked by guys on the sidewalk selling I LOVE NEW YORK paraphernalia in New York City.

My dad's whole family is in Madras and I was born in America so we didn't have that big Indian community. I don't really have anything interesting to say about it. When I talk about it people are like, 'meh, let's talk about something else.'

I knew that the best way to get out of chores, or sports, or talking to elderly relatives on the phone was by holding up a book and saying, But I'm just enjoying Little House on the Prairie so much!

When I was a kid, my parents smartly raised us to keep quiet, be respectful to older people, and generally not question adults all that much. I think that's because they were assuming that 99 percent of the time, we'd be interacting with worthy, smart adults ... They didn't ever tell me 'Sometimes you will meet idiots who are technically adults and authority figures. You don't have to do what they say.

I had placed a lot of faith in Woody Allen's belief that 80 percent of success is just showing up. I said to myself: Are you serious? 80 percent? Sure, I can just show up. Here I am, New York! Give me a job!

Here's my feeling: For everyone, men and women, it's important to be a feminist. It's important to have female characters. It's wonderful for women to mentor other women, but it's just as important for women to mentor men and vice-versa. In my line of work, having Greg Daniels be such a great mentor to me is fantastic. Finding a writer's assistant, be it a man or a woman, and encouraging them to think with a feminist perspective, is key.

Future hipsters will love me ironically.

Cinch together the whole look with a wide belt" was a very popular style in the early 2000s, which we believed accentuated our curves but in reality made a generation of women look like we were wearing lumbar support braces.

One of the unexpected and wonderfully fair things I have learned in my career is that if Hollywood were filled just with perfect-looking people, then soap operas would be the most-watched things in the world. But they're not. Looks are great, but they're not compelling enough. I've noticed that successful actors with long careers are usually talented actors with charismatic screen presences, and all of them exude one thing: confidence.

I think sometimes people think cheerful is a synonym for dumb, so no one is ever cheerful.

Another old saying is that revenge is a dish best served cold. But it feels best served piping hot, straight out of the oven of outrage. My opinion? Take care of revenge right away.

I am an incredibly impatient person.

When I have kids I will largely follow how my parents raised me, because, like everyone else on the planet, I think my parents are perfect and so am I. But one thing I will impart to my children is If you're scared of something, that isn't a sign that you have to do it. It probably means you shouldn't do it. Call Dad or Mom immediately.

The chorus of "Jack and Diane" is: Oh yeah, life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone. Are you kidding me? The thrill of living was high school? Come on, Mr. Cougar Mellencamp. Get a life.

I have a whole system down for returning online shopping: a tape gun, a printer for return labels. That has replaced traditional window shopping in my life, as I've gotten busier.

Is soap cool again, or is body wash still the way to go?

To put it kindly, I am a very talkative, social person. To put it less kindly, I'm a flibbertigibbet, which is what my frenemy Rainn Wilson calls me.

People don't say "Give me your honest opinion" because they want an honest opinion. They say it because it's rude to say "Please tell me I'm amazing.

Just bear a passing resemblance to a fictional romantic trope I like and I will love you forever. We're all just trying to find the Mark Darcy of our workplace, aren't we?

Live performance really terrifies me. I haven't done it, really, in years. I think that's why I retired from my brief career in stand-up.

The reason I pull Irish exits is not because I think I'm too busy and cool to be bothered with pleasantries. It's that when there is a gathering of more than thirty people I don't want to waste your time with hellos and good-byes. I think it's actually the more polite thing to do, because I'm not coercing partygoers into some big farewell moment with me.

Why is everyone trying to tell me that when you get older it gets better?

I've always had that chip on my shoulder. I've just always been super hard on myself.

I love 'The Office.' I'm in the premiere, and I'm maybe gonna shoot another episode this season, but I've been there since the very beginning, so when I found out this is the last year - I am a good Asian kid who was an A student - I wish I could be there to the end to see things through.

On 'The Office,' so much of the show is about disguising your true feelings and your romantic feelings because it was a mock documentary.

What? I have a cold. Don't get a look of terror on your face. The worst that could happen is that you'll get a cold, too. You don't have to theatrically Purell a thousand times a day and look all panicky every time I come into the room.

There is a lot of catarsis that passes itself off as art or comedy and I'm kind of critical of that. I think that just because you bare your soul or underwear or private moments it doesn't , or necessarily make for entertainment, or good writing, or funny writing.

I feel like I'm in the right profession.

There is no sunrise so beautiful that it is worth waking me up to see it.

We clung to each other with blind loyalty, like Lord Voldemort and his snake, Nagini. I, of course, was Nagini. If you messed with one of us, you knew you messed with both of us, and Voldemort was going to cast a murder spell on you, or Nagini was going to chomp on your jugular.

Which I would write on Sunday afternoons sitting cross-legged on my bedroom floor with no pants on.

Lots of stupid people were skinny, and yet I couldn't do this incredibly simple thing they could do with seeming ease.

Why didn't you talk about whether women are funny or not?
I just felt that by commenting on that in any real way, it would be tacit approval of it as a legitimate debate, which it isn't.

You should never have to say hello or goodbye. Even at work sometimes, and I know this is very unpopular, is that if I'm going to work every single day, I don't think you should have to hug people hello every single day when you come to work. I saw you Monday!

That's because my show is on a major network and you can't show all that stuff, and also because my dad is alive and I would like to have lunch with him without feeling mired in dishonor.

We never needed best friend gear because I guess with real friends you don't have to make it official. It just is.

As it is, I guess I find "Jack & Diane" a little disgusting. As a child of immigrant professionals, I can't help but notice the wasteful frivolity of it all.

If someone called me chubby, it would no longer be something that kept me up late at night. Being called fat is not like being called stupid or unfunny, which is the worst thing you could ever say to me. Do I envy Jennifer Hudson for being able to lose all that weight and look smokin' hot? Of course, yes. Do I sometimes look at Gisele Bundchen and wonder how awesome life would be if I never had to wear Spanx? Duh, of course. That's kind of the point of Gisele Bundchen. And maybe I will, once or twice, for a very short period of time. But on the list of things I want to do in my lifetime, that's not near the top. I mean, it's not near the bottom either. I'd say it's right above "Learn to drive a vespa," but several notches below "film a chase scene for a movie.

Hey, a disclaimer about me: I'm rude.

I just want ambitious teenagers to know it is totally fine to be quite, observant kids. Besides being a delight to your parents, you will find you have plenty of time later to catch up.

Sometimes you will meet idiots who are technically adults and authority figures. You don't have to do what they say. You can calmly say, 'Can I first call my mom and ask if I have to do this, please?

I guess when you go to business school you never turn business off.

Something that's happened recently is that I don't beat myself up about stuff.

I want to say one last thing, and it's important. Though I am a generally happy person who feels comfortable in my skin, I do beat myself up because I am influenced by a societal pressure to be thin. All the time. I feel it the same way anybody who picks up a magazine and sees Keira Knightley's elegantly bony shoulder blades poking out of a backless dress does. I don't know if I've ever seen my shoulder blades once. Honestly, I'm dubious that any part of my body could be so sharp and firm as to be described as a "blade." I feel it when I wake up in the morning and try on every single pair of my jeans and everything looks bad and I just want to go back to sleep. But my secret is: even though I wish I could be thin, and that I could have the ease of lifestyle that I associate with being thin, I don't wish for it with all of my heart. Because my heart is reserved for way more important things.

Writing a book is the most terrifying thing that I've ever done. It's so much harder than writing for television because it is a completely different skill set.

I know a lot of people think of me and they like, oh that girl is really sexy, that girl is really put together, she would never do something as unladylike as a beet eating competition.

As a kid, I was curious but not remotely adventurous, if that makes sense.

I would love to have Snoop Dogg waiting in my office in a cupcake-print suit to tell all my problems to. Wouldn't we all?

There's obviously instances where I perceive sexism in my job ... I think that the sort of sexism that I see has been one that's a little bit like a gentler form of sexism, but still a little bit debilitating, which is that when, as a producer and a writer, whether it was at The Office or [at The Mindy Project], if I make a decision, it'll still seem like it's up for debate.

Writing, at its heart, is a solitary pursuit, designed to make people depressoids, drug addicts, misanthropes, and antisocial weirdos.

I think it's actually the more polite thing to do, because I'm not coercing partygoers into some big farewell moment with me. Then other people feel like they have to stop what they're doing and hug me, too. It's time-wasting dominoes.

Every day, I wake up and I'm like, "Oh, I'm the star of my own show that has my name in it and I get to write it and hire actors that I've loved for such a long time!" It's amazing!

Sometimes I aid into the confusion by having my character's name be my name.

He was so popular you could barely look at him without being blinded by cool.

I would love to be married. But it's not a necessity like the way that I feel I need and want to have children. It would be wonderful to have a husband, and I would feel blessed to do it. But I would feel sad for the rest of my life if I had no kids.

We always think of a diet with a big groan. But I think diets are fun. I think it is an American pastime for a lot of women.

Is this a generation of orphans who are going to the improv to do stand-up?

How is your love life, Minz?" she would ask hungrily, hoping to be entertained by raunchy details.
I had none. "Um, you know. So hard to meet guys," I answered vaguely, hoping my lack of a sex life would seem mysterious and not pathetic.

I don't have very much time to surf the net, because it's as though my boss has a tracking device on me. The instant I'm looking at a Chloe sweater on Shopbop, I'll get a call in my office with a PA asking: "Paul wants to know where you are and why you're not in the writers room, and if maybe you're online shopping."

I don't read them; I just hit "accept." iTunes may own my ovaries, for all I know.

Sometimes you like the idea of someone so much, you just want to do whatever it takes to make it work.

I, like most women, I dress for other women, I think. If I was going to dress for men, I think in general I would be just wearing, like, a fitted black T-shirt and tight jeans every day.

As a kid it's adorable to have a gap in your teeth. But then, because of the shifting in my mouth, I started whistling through it, and as a 32-year-old woman, whistling while you speak in sort of annoying.

Listen, my body is attracted to your body but when you speak it makes my brain angry.

Here's how I think you can get your confidence back, kid: Work hard, know your shit, show your shit, and then feel entitled. Listen to no one except the two smartest and kindest adults you know, and that doesn't always mean your parents. If you do that, you will be fine. Now,

Unfortunately, I can't be Tina, because it's very difficult to lure her into a Freaky Friday– type situation where we could switch bodies, even though in the movies they make it look so easy. Believe me, I've tried.

I always wanted to write, even before I realized that there was a comedy writers' world, or what that life was like. I never thought of myself, at least as a little kid, in terms of being the onscreen talent. I always thought it'd be so much fun to write sketches and be a writer. Even as little as 6 or 7, that's what my main interest was.

I am the kind of person that is drawn to colors against my will.

7. Have one great cologne that's not from the drugstore. Just one. Wear very little of it, all the time. I cannot tell you how sexy it is to be enveloped in a hug by a man whose smell you remember. Then, anytime I smell that cologne, I think of you.

Sometimes I eavesdrop on people. I could rationalize it - oh, this is good anthropological research for characters I'm writing - but it's basically just nosiness. It also helps me gauge where I'm at: Am I normal?

I sort of refuse to be an outsider, even though I know that I very much look like one to a lot of people, and I refuse to view myself in such terms.

And when I say the Fashion Police, of course I'm speaking of the small group of screeching gay guys and fashion "experts" on that E! show led by the reanimated corpse of Joan Rivers.

I simply regard romantic comedies as a subgenre of sci-fi, in which the world created therein has different rules than my regular human world.

I don't want to hear about the endless struggles to keep sex exciting, or the work it takes to plan a date night. I want to hear that you guys watch every episode of The Bachelorette together in secret shame, or that one got the other hooked on Breaking Bad and if either watches it without the other, they're dead meat. I want to see you guys high-five each other like teammates on a recreational softball team you both do for fun.

For lunch I usually have something hearty like a burger or tacos. I have always believed lunch should be the biggest meal of the day. People who say breakfast should be the biggest meal are insane. You can't have dessert at breakfast.

People talk about confidence without ever bringing up hard work. That's a mistake. I know I sound like some dour older spinster on Downton Abbey who has never felt a man's touch and whose heart has turned to stone, but I don't understand how you could have self-confidence if you don't do the work ... I have never, ever, ever, met a high confident person and successful person who is not what a movie would call a 'workaholic.' Because confidence is like respect; you have to earn it.

If my childhood, teens, and twenties were about wanting people to like me, now I want people to know me. So,

As I got older, I got craftier and less obvious, but I've always put a lot of energy and effort into people liking me. That's why I've never understood the compliment "effortless." People love to say: "She just walked into the party, charming people with her effortless beauty." I don't understand that at all. What's so wrong with effort, anyway? It means you care. What about the girl who "walked into the party, her determination to please apparent on her eager face"? Sure, she might seem a little crazy, and, yes, maybe everything she says sounds like conversation starters she found on a website, but at least she's trying. Let's give her a shot!

I can't for the life of me not eat something that I want to eat. You know how if you turned on a faucet in your sink to wash your hands, the idea of leaving the bathroom without turning it off is insane? That's how I am about ignoring delicious food.

What's so wrong with effort, anyway? It means you care.

[ ... ]Frisbee people won't let it go. My theory is that this is because there's a huge overlap between people who are good at Frisbee and people who do Teach for America.

I'd rather be like Odysseus than someone who was handed everything.

I'm a role model now ... I want to be a better person because I don't want to disappoint those girls. I stop and think about my actions more. I tip great, I try not to swear too much, and I remember to thank people and be grateful. And all that stuff I do to appear' better has actually made me a better person. I wish I had always acted like I was a little bit famous.

I've found my productive-writing-to-screwing-around ratio to be one to seven. So, for every eight hour day of writing, there is only one good productive hour of work being done. The other seven hours are preparing for writing: pacing around the house, collapsing cardboard bxes for recycling, reading the DVD extras pamphlet from BBC Pride & Prejudice, getting snacks lined up for writing, and YouTubing toddlers who learned the 'Single Ladies' dance. I know. Isn't that horrible? So, basically, writing this piece took me the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas.