Mindy Kaling Quotes

I'm not married, I frequently use my debit card to buy things that cost less than three dollars, and my bedroom is so untidy it looks like vandals ransacked the Anthropologie sale section. I'm kind of a mess.

We always think of a diet with a big groan. But I think diets are fun. I think it is an American pastime for a lot of women.

It makes me cry because it means that fewer and fewer people are believing it's cool to want what I want, which is to be married and have kids and love each other in a monogamous, long-lasting relationship.

I have a whole system down for returning online shopping: a tape gun, a printer for return labels. That has replaced traditional window shopping in my life, as I've gotten busier.

Another old saying is that revenge is a dish best served cold. But it feels best served piping hot, straight out of the oven of outrage. My opinion? Take care of revenge right away.

It used to be that you had to make female TV characters perfect so no one would be offended by your 'portrayal' of women. Even when I started out on 'The Office' eight years ago, we could write our male characters funny and flawed, but not the women. And now, thankfully, it's completely different.

I was obsessed with being popular when I was in high school and never achieved it. There's photos from our high school musicals and things, and I'm comically in the deep background, wearing a beggar's costume.

I was kind of unfriendly and suspicious of everyone around me. I didn't talk until I was about 15. It's a kind of famous story at my house.

My whole childhood was like: Work hard, be quiet, respect elderly people, respect your parents, and just be unobtrusive.

I don't ever remember being able to debate with my parents. Even though I thought of myself as a very bright kid, I couldn't be vocal in that way.

All women love Colin Firth: Mr. Darcy, Mark Darcy, George VI—at this point he could play the Craigslist Killer and people would be like, 'Oh my God, the Craigslist Killer has the most boyish smile!

Besides, who wants to read about success, anyway? Successful serial murderers, maybe.

I think women in general like men that don't give them the thing that we want. We want a chase.

I have crushes on celebrities or people I meet or see in the coffee shop, and every day I fall in love with three people simply because they said one funny thing or appeared to me in a certain way.

I, like most women, I dress for other women, I think. If I was going to dress for men, I think in general I would be just wearing, like, a fitted black T-shirt and tight jeans every day.

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.

I just want ambitious teenagers to know it is totally fine to be quite, observant kids. Besides being a delight to your parents, you will find you have plenty of time later to catch up.

Maybe the point is that any marriage is work, but you may as well pick work that you like.

I have an underdog spirit in me, and now it feels weird to kind of get my own way more often than not.

I had these kind of unrealistic expectations that were fueled by romantic comedies, and it has both helped me and hurt me in many ways. It helped me because, in general, they've made me hopeful. I just figure things will eventually work out for me. But nobody is like any Tom Hanks character. Nobody is Hugh Grant. No one is Meg Ryan!

In terms of my Indianness, I try not to rely on it nor deny it. When it comes up organically in my writing, we can address it. About five years ago, we wrote this episode of 'The Office,' called 'Diwali,' which seemed like an organic way of using it.

I hated L.A. for a long time, and I wanted to leave it. I had these fantasies of going to 'SNL' and falling in love with some writer on 'SNL,' of getting married and living in New York.

Comedy writers have the most fragile egos.

The overlap in the Venn diagram of things that men hate for women to wear and the things that I love to wear, it's almost a full overlap on the Venn diagram, which is unfortunate for me.

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.

I'm too excited to sleep!

I find it very sad that so many girls who look up to me are young women of color who have been told that they are ugly, and who feel that they are not normal...I think it's so important that women look like me find that they can be beautiful or objects of love, attention and affection.

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.

It's weird: I was in a conference room, shouting out story ideas in the voices of different characters, and it was something I had to learn because I'd never been in that atmosphere. But I think I had a quick learning curve, because this is the job I was supposed to have.

I can't have a big breakfast or a big lunch because I get very lethargic, and then I get really cranky. I eat, but I have to eat small, healthful amounts of food.

I am a super-confident writer, and as a joke writer and as an actress, I'm like, 'I want to go head-to-head with every person.' I am an Indian woman and I'm a kind of double minority in this world.

I was just this chubby little Indian kid who looked like a nerd. I didn't have a ton of academic skills. It wasn't until I was in high school that I was like, "I guess I like writing dialogue." So that's how I got into it.

I love that 'Much Ado About Nothing,' passionate, smart fighting. I love fighting with guys, and that's something that I don't get to see: arguing at a high level with a member of the opposite sex. That didn't really happen that much on 'The Office.' I just like that 'Moonlighting,' Benedick-Beatrice type of thing.

One friend with whom you have a lot in common is better than three with whom you struggle to find things to talk about.

I hate gowns. It's a rare gown indeed that is cool. Most are elegant or whatever, a quality I don't put a big premium on.

When people call me either a girl crush or their best friend, like, the best friend they want, that's, to me, the best compliment anyone could ever give me.

I guess nothing puts a damper on a one-night stand as much as your friend pointing out all the opportunities where you might have been killed.

All I want to do is be a gay icon. I was reading Lady Gaga's twitter, because she has like 12 million followers, or something like that. I feel like she has fans, gay, straight, bi, who would throw themselves off a building for her.

I'm a smart enough person to know that I don't want everyone to be cookie-cutter versions of the nine guys who wear Converse sneakers.

There is no sunrise so beautiful that it is worth waking me up to see it.

I’m the one who looks at the infant, smiles nervously, and as my contribution to small talk, robotically announces to the parent, “Your child looks healthy and well cared for.

I regard romantic comedies as a subgenre of sci-fi, in which the world operates according to different rules than my regular human world.

I don't want to hear about the endless struggles to keep sex exciting, or the work it takes to plan a date night. I want to hear that you guys watch every episode of The Bachelorette together in secret shame, or that one got the other hooked on Breaking Bad and if either watches it without the other, they're dead meat. I want to see you guys high-five each other like teammates on a recreational softball team you both do for fun.

Anybody can have a birthday. It requires nothing. Murderers have birthdays. It's the opposite of anything that I believe in. And I don't like at work where you stop everything to sing 'Happy Birthday' to someone. I feel like that's for children.

Running is a quick trigger for a good mood. The great thing about endorphins, you don't have to be in great shape to get them.

I love telling press the designers I'm wearing, especially if they are emerging. That's exciting to me, supporting talented newcomers.

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

There's obviously instances where I perceive sexism in my job. ... I think that the sort of sexism that I see has been one that's a little bit like a gentler form of sexism, but still a little bit debilitating, which is that when, as a producer and a writer, whether it was at The Office or [at The Mindy Project], if I make a decision, it'll still seem like it's up for debate.