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.

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

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

I do not think stress is a legitimate topic of conversation, in public anyway. No one ever wants to hear how stressed out anyone else is, because most of the time everyone is stressed out. Going on and on in detail about how stressed out I am isn’t conversation. It’ll never lead anywhere. No one is going to say, “Wow, Mindy, you really have it especially bad. I have heard some stories of stress, but this just takes the cake.

When you're "East Coast" person, you are so insufferable, and you have no idea. And I was. One, because I was miserable, and nobody liked to be around a miserable person, and two, everything that I thought was so profound, everyone had already dealt with.

I feel lucky because I was a nerd, which I talk about in the book, but I had academic success, so through that, because that's what my parents put a great deal of value on, I had a great childhood because I sort of fulfilled the expectations of being good at school.

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.