Once I saw Paris Hilton leaving a restaurant in Hollywood and the paparazzi cameras were all over her. It looked so unpleasant. It wasn't because she didn't look sensational - she was that perfect combination of fashionable and slutty - it was because the paparazzi guys were shouting these insanely rude and intrusive questions at her. Like, asking her who she was sleeping with and stuff. I was kind of interested in the answer, so I was glad they asked, but it was still gross.

I’ve worked in television for 10 years straight. If I were a man, it wouldn’t be considered strange [to have confidence] at all.

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.

Don't fall into the trap of thinking about politics in your workplace too much. Just work hard, be cheerful, ignore distractions.

Your fear that your parents will actually kill you for dropping out of college is something that I think a lot of children of immigrants would maybe relate to.

My dream of course, as a writer and a person who's an entertainer, is: Grow up to be Mindy Kaling, don't grow up to be Mindy Lahiri.

When I was a little kid, I wrote this play about all these characters living in a haunted house. There was a witch who lived there, and a mummy. When they were all hassling him, this guy who bought the house - I can't believe I remember this - he said to them, 'Who's paying the mortgage on this haunted house?' I thought that was really funny.