I'm Indian-American and I think that when I think of myself as being culturally Indian, it had so much to do with when I lived with my parents and was a kid because they would take me to the Diwali festivals. They would take me to the temple, and they would teach me about all the different holidays.

There wasn't a big tradition of comedy at Dartmouth. More than that, there wasn't really anything artsy going on in Hanover, or even in New Hampshire. The cool thing about the school is that there's nothing for people to watch, so if you were to do a play or a sketch or an improv troupe, it was always packed. There's nowhere else for anyone to go. But there was no comedy.

People talk about mumblecore but I prefer bumblecore, hyper-realistic bee movies about how bees really are.

I'm actually an impatient person. I'm very suited for television because with the process, it's six weeks from the time you come up with an episode until when it airs. We can't drag it out that long. With film, and this is not a profound observation or an original one; it can go on endlessly unless the movie's like incredibly topical. That's the challenge for me, as an impatient person who wants see things come to life. ... I mean, it's just this feeling I get when I see a movie I love.

It doesn't help for you to name a character's first name be Mindy and then be like, "I'm nothing like the character."

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 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.