Couples are really funny, because if they are together, they can fight and do fun things together. In Jane Austen books, marriage is the end of the story, but I actually think a really funny couple could be a fun thing to watch.

We have this saying, and it's been very useful when a series, 'The Mindy Project' goes for longer than a hundred episodes, which is Mindy character can never get what she wants when she wants it. We enjoyed it because it felt very real to her character to make a big impulsive move and it seems like she has everything, this instant family, a guy she loves and then there's a moment of panic.

My dad is a very snappy dresser; he gets all his stuff tailored. He's an architect, so he's a little more artistically minded.

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.

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?

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.

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.