Mindy Kaling Quotes

I have the right to life, liberty and chicken wings.

My mom always used to say, "You can't say I love you before you can say I." And I think that sort of makes sense.

I kind of killed it in college. You know that saying "big fish in a small pond"? At Dartmouth college, I was freakin' Jaws in a community swimming pool

I don't mind that if I ever star in movies, they'll likely be mine. That's okay, because my great role models - Woody Allen, even Tyler Perry, who is actually one of my role models, even if that seems kind of strange - they do that themselves. And it's great. They build empires, and they're known as having their own voice. I think it's 20 times more fun to act on a set where I feel the freedom to change the dialogue.

Elizabeth Kennedy is so chic. Her gowns have such structure, I feel like a work of art.

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.

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

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.

My dad is funny in his own way, and so is my brother, but in terms of legitimately making a lot of people laugh, that's my mom. I inherit my sense of comedy from her.

In real life, shouldn't a wedding be an awesome party you throw with your great pal, in the presence of a bunch of your other friends? A great day, for sure, but not the beginning and certainly not the end of your friendship with a person you can't wait to talk about gardening with the for the next forty years.

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.

The Internet also makes it extraordinarily difficult for me to focus. One small break to look up exactly how almond milk is made, and four hours later I'm reading about the Donner Party and texting all my friends: DID YOU GUYS KNOW ABOUT THE DONNER PARTY AND HOW MESSED UP THAT WAS? TEXT ME BACK SO WE CAN TALK ABOUT IT!

Twitter is the most amazing medium for a comedy writer. I can't get in every idea I want on the show no matter how hard I try to bully the other writers, so it's a way of me getting out other comic ideas and immediately getting feedback.

Of course, everyone wants to be mythologized in a great way.

Truthfully, I guess I would like to be remembered as a great writer and a kind person. I wouldn't mind if an expensive bag were named after me, like Jane Birkin.

The way that TV is set up is very helpful for when a show comes to an end because as an actor, you've got acting, but as a showrunner you still get to edit for three months and after that ends you get to do a sound mix. So, as a writer-performer in television, it's a very nurturing, gradual environment to say goodbye to a show.

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.

I'm not overweight. I flucuate between chubby and curvy.

When you only do 10 episodes for a final season, every character and all of her interactions in every storyline have so much more import because it's the last time we're going to do it. It's been really helpful saying, "OK, where do we want each of these characters to end?" We have 10 episodes to do it and working backward from that, I kind of envy my friends who have always been on a cable network because this is really that great benefit of doing it this way.

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 think sometimes people think cheerful is a synonym for dumb, so no one is ever cheerful.

There's the psychotic ambitious side of myself that wants a fashion line and my own network and be like a combination of Oprah and Gwen Stefani. And have a perfume. Definitely a perfume.

Is this a generation of orphans who are going to the improv to do stand-up?

There’s a whole list of things I would probably change about myself. For example, I’m always trying to lose fifteen pounds. But I never need to be skinny. I don’t want to be skinny. I’m constantly in a state of self-improvement but I don’t beat myself up over it.

I've been working in television for so long, since 2004, and I just worked nonstop throughout that time and I've learned so much. I've definitely done that 10,000 hours. I know the format really well and I feel comfortable in it. I'm excited about going into something I'm not so comfortable in, which is film.

I work so hard and so many hours, and I've done that for years and years and years.

Sometimes you just have to put on lip gloss and pretend to be psyched.

For heaven’s sake, if you don’t know someone’s name, just pretend you do. Do that thing everyone else does, where you vaguely say, “Nice to see you!” and make weak eye contact.

When smart people are nice, it's always terrifying, because I know they're taking in everything and thinking all kinds of smart and potentially judgmental things.

That's what she said.

You should never have to say hello or goodbye. Even at work sometimes, and I know this is very unpopular, is that if I'm going to work every single day, I don't think you should have to hug people hello every single day when you come to work. I saw you Monday!

If it weren't for my imagination, I would weigh ten thousand pounds. This is because the only way I am able to exercise anymore is through a long and vivid revenge fantasy.

Catharsis isn't art. You can't rely on catharsis to get a laugh. Because guess what? People do laugh when something's shocking, but that is, to me, the absolute fakest of laughs. That's not something that sustains a television series, or a movie, or even 45 minutes of a stand-up set at Carolines.

I have a personality defect where I sort of refuse to see myself as an underdog... It's because of my parents. They raised me with the entitlement of a tall, blond, white man.

I once heard that Quentin Tarantino, who I obviously love and think is a genius, says that there's no such thing as guilty pleasure, there's only pleasures. And I do love that idea, because I do think that there's a pretentiousness when people make a list of their favorite things. I like to live a life where I don't think of my pleasures as guilty pleasures.

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.

I have a goofy side that impacts my clothing a lot. To that end, I love witty, colorful, prints.

"Why is everyone trying to tell me that when you get older it gets better?" I didn't believe it, because I'm so contrarian and suspicious of everything. And then to find that it's kind of true is nice.

So I’m into men now, even though they can be frightening. I want a schedule-keeping, waking-up-early, wallet-carrying, non-Velcro-shoe-wearing man.

I was always a silent comedy nerd. I would stay up late and sneak downstairs to watch 'Saturday Night Live' and 'Kids in the Hall,' and things like that. Very early on, my parents realized that I was not going to be an engineer or a doctor. I just don't have those inclinations, at all.

This book will take you two days to read. Did you even see the cover? It’s mostly pink. If you’re reading this book every night for months, something is not right.

I write a little bit about what it's like to be a female boss in my book [ Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?] and the things I've noticed about that, but by and large, it's just a tough job in general.

Because confidence is like respect; you have to earn it.

I want it to feel very satisfying, the ending, so you've felt like you were going on a journey and we were trying to lead you somewhere. So going into that, it's made it extremely funny but also a very emotional last season of the 'The Mindy Project' .

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.

..I find it incredible impossible not to cry when I hear Stevie Nicks's "Landslide," especially the lyric: "I've been afraid of changing, because I've built my life around you." I think a good test to see if a human is actually a robot/android/cylon is to have them listen to this song lyric and study their reaction. If they don't cry, you should stab them through the heart. You will find a fusebox.

I don't think anyone wants to grow up to be Mindy Lahiri, the same way no one wants to grow up to be Michael Scott.But that's OK.

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.