Mindy Kaling
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.Collection: Inspirational
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.Collection: Diet
I'm not good at anything except writing jokes. I wasn't good at sports, I wasn't good at anything artsy, ever. I think there was a real worry for a while about what I would be good at. I was just this chubby little Indian kid who looked like a nerd.Collection: Sports
I have a great job writing for 'The Office,' but, really, all television writers do is dream of one day writing movies. I'll put it this way: At the Oscars the most famous person in the room is, like, Angelina Jolie. At the Emmys the huge exciting celebrity is Bethenny Frankel. You get what I mean.Collection: Famous
What I'd really like to write is a romantic comedy. This is my favorite kind of movie. I feel almost embarrassed revealing this, because the genre has been so degraded in the past twenty years that saying you like romantic comedies is essentially an admission of mild stupidity.Collection: Romantic
I regard romantic comedies as a subgenre of sci-fi, in which the world operates according to different rules than my regular human world.Collection: Romantic
When men hear women want a commitment, they think it means commitment to a romantic relationship, but that's not it. It's a commitment to not floating around anymore. I want a guy who is entrenched in his own life. Entrenched is awesome.Collection: Romantic
Anybody can have a birthday. It requires nothing. Murderers have birthdays. It's the opposite of anything that I believe in. And I don't like at work where you stop everything to sing 'Happy Birthday' to someone. I feel like that's for children.Collection: Birthday
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!Collection: Romantic
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.Collection: Sad
Woody Allen is really the ultimate. I love that he believed in himself enough to do what he did. And I have that same feeling - that there's nobody that looks like me in movies, nobody would cast me as a romantic lead, but I want to do it and I feel confident that I can.Collection: Romantic
I have such a rich fantasy life, I can't help it. I do make up a lot of romantic stories in my head.Collection: Romantic
On 'The Office,' so much of the show is about disguising your true feelings and your romantic feelings because it was a mock documentary.Collection: Romantic
I think a lot of writers, male and female, write as if their parents were killed in a car accident when they were 2, and they have no one to hold accountable. And unfortunately, I don't have that. I have parents who I care about what they think.Collection: Car
Almost every college playwright or sketch or improv comedian was sort of aware of Christopher Durang - even kids in high school. His short plays were so accessible to younger people and I think that was inspirational to me.Collection: Inspirational
I think as humans, no one remembers their successes, everyone just remembers their failures.
All I want to do is be a gay icon. I was reading Lady Gaga's twitter, because she has like 12 million followers, or something like that. I feel like she has fans, gay, straight, bi, who would throw themselves off a building for her.
I never want to be called the funniest Indian female comedian that exists. I feel like I can go head-to-head with the best white, male comedy writers that are out there. Why would I want to self-categorize myself into a smaller group than I'm able to compete in?
I've always assumed that my parents and my in-laws would live with me when I get older and have children. I just assume it will happen and that it's the right way to do things. It's a deeply Indian custom - that you kind of inherit your parents and your spouse's parents and you take care of them eventually.
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.
I just have my characters say my controversial opinions and then hide behind them.
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.
I have a thick skin, which comes from being a not-really-skinny, dark-skinned Indian woman. I haven't fit in every place, and so I'm kind of used to resistance.
Right now, I'm hankering for new adventures... Ninety percent of the time I'm having romantic-comedy fantasies in which I'm wearing little pencil skirts and hurrying down to the subway.
When people call me either a girl crush or their best friend, like, the best friend they want, that's, to me, the best compliment anyone could ever give me.
Anyone who's lost someone to cancer will say this, that you have to struggle to try to remember the person before the diagnosis happened, because they really do change - as anyone would change.
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?
Personally, I, Mindy Kaling want to spend like 80 percent of my life hanging out with women.
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.
There's a female writer-performer thing going on in TV right now.
It used to be that you had to make female TV characters perfect so no one would be offended by your 'portrayal' of women. Even when I started out on 'The Office' eight years ago, we could write our male characters funny and flawed, but not the women. And now, thankfully, it's completely different.
Growing up, I remember my parents feeling a little wary of 'The Simpsons.' This was the late eighties, and there was a wave of articles about TV shows that were bad for America. Then we all started watching it and loved it.
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 feel like the high-concept shows that have some kind of gimmick tend not to be the hit classic shows of all time.
I am a super-confident writer, and as a joke writer and as an actress, I'm like, 'I want to go head-to-head with every person.' I am an Indian woman and I'm a kind of double minority in this world.
My relationship with my mom is really the single most profound relationship that I've ever had in my life.
If I could make a device where people could just intuit everything you are thinking - a little cable you plug into, like, a USB port, I would make a billion dollars.
I feel like if I had my personality but was an OB/GYN, you would be psyched. You'd be like, 'My chatty, pop-culture-interested but plainspoken, wants-to-talk-about-clothes but serious-minded doctor.' I feel like I would clean up with patients. That's kind of a cocky thing to say.
People talk about mumblecore but I prefer bumblecore, hyper-realistic bee movies about how bees really are.
I am always surprised at what movie studios think people will want to see. I'm even more surprised at how often they are correct.
I went to Dartmouth College so simply by being an Indian-American woman, I was already so statistically interesting. And then the fact that I didn't want to do anything science-related, and I wanted to write comedy plays and act little bit - I mean, I became deeply interesting in college because of how rare that was.
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.
People don't want to listen to a celebrity tweeting about their charities and shows. That's why comedy writers do well - we put out little funny ideas.
Fast food is hugely important in the life of a comedy writer. All we do is order in, and what we're going to eat is hotly debated.
Twitter is so short, it's safe. I don't want my bosses to be like, 'Hey, your script is due and we saw you wrote four blog pages.'
People take things at face value on social media. Earnestness is the assumption.
I want a schedule-keeping, waking-up-early, wallet-carrying, picture-hanging man. I don't care if he takes prescription drugs for cholesterol or hair loss.
I'm not married, I frequently use my debit card to buy things that cost less than three dollars, and my bedroom is so untidy it looks like vandals ransacked the Anthropologie sale section. I'm kind of a mess.
I really love 'Bridget Jones's Diary' - and I love the book, too. You wonder how it ever got made into a movie. She's supposed to be chubby, and two of the hottest guys ever are straight-up fighting over her?
Comedy writers have the most fragile egos.