Top 294 Quotes & Sayings by Mindy Kaling - Page 5

When I have time to sit and reflect on the different situations that I face every day, I'll be able to speak more succinctly about the challenges as a woman.

I'm an actor and a writer and a showrunner and I edit my show. ... I have a job that three people usually have, and I have it in one person. And the idea that the critic thought that I had this excess of time for which I could go to, like, panels or write essays was just so laughable to me.

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.

Whenever I wanted to talk to anyone on the East Coast, it was way too late. Living three hours behind was one thing I complained about. The other thing, of course, was just that there were no seasons. I would complain about that too. Just tons of complaining, man, early on. I can't believe I'm still friends with the people I was friends with when I first started in LA.

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' .

Every actor pretends that they hate sex scenes, and the truth is that they all love them, and they're lying.

I always wanted to write, even before I realized that there was a comedy writers' world, or what that life was like. I never thought of myself, at least as a little kid, in terms of being the onscreen talent. I always thought it'd be so much fun to write sketches and be a writer. Even as little as 6 or 7, that's what my main interest was.

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.

My understanding of the way sex scenes work is that you're surrounded by crew, and you're cold, and you have to do it eight times 'cause they didn't get the lighting. It doesn't sound pleasant, but you think that actors actually enjoy it?

Looking back six years ago when I had just come from 'The Office' to 'The Mindy Project' and what I was trying to say back then. I feel like we don't revisit our younger idealistic selves, you just get in this pattern of churning these episodes out. Now I was like, "Let's try and get in my mind back then," because my life personally has changed so much, too. I just thought, "What was I trying to say? And now can I make it look like it was all part of one larger story."

This is extremely challenging when you sound like a 12-year-old girl, and you decide your first personal endeavor is to play, like, a - like, a very macho dude.

Those who are saying it's possible [to balance family and business] are often in a little bit of a rarefied place where they also have the money to do that. It's not quite such an easy stance to take when you don't have the same resources. I like to remind people that these are rich Manhattanites and to keep an eye on the fact that, especially with social media and these articles and these blogs, that that is not the reality for most women, unfortunately.

There is a lot of catarsis that passes itself off as art or comedy and I'm kind of critical of that. I think that just because you bare your soul or underwear or private moments it doesn't , or necessarily make for entertainment, or good writing, or funny writing.

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.

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.

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

I know a lot of people think of me and they like, oh that girl is really sexy, that girl is really put together, she would never do something as unladylike as a beet eating competition.

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

I'm so much more confident and sexy at thirty-eight than I ever was when I was eighteen or twenty-four.

It's really sweet when people tweet at me and say I'm their spirit animal or 'I wish she was my best friend,' which is the nicest compliment. For me, it's like, doing television is so personal because you're in people's homes, so the fact that people feel that way means so much to me.

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.

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.

In my writers' room, which is mostly men, I get a lot of questions like "What would be the quickest way to pass as a seemingly normal guy between the ages of twenty-five and forty years old?"

I'm Indian-American and I think that when I think of myself as being culturally Indian, it had so much to do with when I lived with my parents and was a kid because they would take me to the Diwali festivals. They would take me to the temple, and they would teach me about all the different holidays.

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.

It doesn't help for you to name a character's first name be Mindy and then be like, "I'm nothing like the character."

As I've gotten older, I can look at myself more clearly and own the things that I'm good at and work on the things that I'm not. Like, I am not skinny. I know that if I were to lose a little weight I'd literally have more time in the morning because I know clothes would fit better. And now I can look at those things more practically. Instead of being like, "What does that say about me?," now I'm just like, "That would be great to sleep in an extra fifteen minutes because I wasn't trying on everything in my closet."

When I was growing up, I didn't do plays in downtown Boston, and my parents weren't putting me in auditions. They never thought, Oh, she has a gift! They never thought of me as an entertainer when I was a young kid.

People who are good at stand-up, they sort of seem to have to do it. Something within them makes them have to go on the road.

I'm giving a lot of opinions, but I don't give any advice. I'm 31 and I'm not married and having kids. I'm five-foot-three. I weigh, like, 150 pounds and I'm not in this position to be telling people how to live.

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.

People, you know, had trouble with the character. Mindy is not immediately likeable. She does and says a lot of things that you don't see in, forget female characters, any characters. Like, she says things like, "I'm going to hell because I don't really care about the environment and I love to gossip."

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.

When I've acted, and it's not been something I've written or have had at least a hand in writing, I do think there is a controlling side of me that is frustrated by that. And I actually don't think that it's a bad thing, because if I'm going to be in movies, in large part they're going to be movies that I write.

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

I think that when you're 5'4" and 150 pounds and you love to chat and you have a blog about shopping, trying to maintain a tiny bit of mystery where you possibly can is not a bad thing.

Colored leather is my favorite. To me, there's nothing more fun than wearing a cobalt blue leather skirt or a fuchsia leather jacket.

They talk about how men are chasers, but women are just like that too. At least a lot of the women that I know, who tend to be ambitious, professionally driven women, they love that. Like seeking something professional that is hard to get, I think they feel the same way about men.

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

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.

Something that's happened recently is that I don't beat myself up about stuff.

Every day, I wake up and I'm like, "Oh, I'm the star of my own show that has my name in it and I get to write it and hire actors that I've loved for such a long time!" It's amazing!

I think a lot of people compare female writers or female comedians to each other in a way that men are not. Male comedy writers are not scrutinized.

There is this cliche of, "Oh, your professional life is fine, but your romantic life isn't." But, that's also really true of me and all my friends. You don't want to not do something that's relatable simply because you're worried that it might be cliche.

"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.

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.

I would be the first to admit that I have incredibly high, ambitious standards for my life and my career, and I've had those my entire life. It's something that was just instilled in me by my parents.

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 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.

My mother is more of an adviser. I followed everything she did when I was younger, because I looked up to her so much.

Writing a book is the most terrifying thing that I've ever done. It's so much harder than writing for television because it is a completely different skill set.

What Mindy has in common with a lot of women in their mid-30s is that she's obsessed with marriage. It's the entire premise of the 'The Mindy Project'. The pilot is her wanting to get married and her ruining her ex-boyfriend's wedding. For someone who fetishizes marriage so much, we're like, "OK, let's give it to her and let's see if it's as good as she thinks it's going to be." That's been the fun of the beginning part of this season is showing her what the challenges are of being married.

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.

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