A Quote by Mindy Kaling

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.
I write about what worries me and, hopefully, things worry me a little bit earlier than they do some other people, purely because I am a writer and it is my job to go out there and be worried by things.
I think the songs I was writing after Aeroplane were full of a lot of undealt-with pain that was just a little too big... the issues seemed too large for me to confront intuitively through songwriting. I kept pushing it and pushing it. There are so many issues about being human and why people inflict pain on each other. There were seeds of all these things I hadn't dealt with. With just the personal issues, I felt I was in over my head, but then to write about it... To write you have to have at least a little bit of confidence you know what you're talking about.
I always wanted to have a young female artist that would tell me the truth about life and not only talk about the good things or the things that were exciting or interesting but also talk about the things that people in general are skeptical to talk about- the bad things that do happen. A good 50% of our lives is things that are happening that we're not necessarily super thrilled about and I feel like that's missing from pop music a lot of the time so my main goal is to be truthful about everything and not just specific things.
It was tricky [to write about Israelis], because everyone has an opinion about the Arab - Israeli conflict, and when I first started writing these stories, I was working for an Arab - Israeli human rights group. It was during the Second Intifada. It was this totally violent and intense time, and I think there's a part of me where I don't know how to write about that situation without getting my politics out of my messages, and that's something that was important for me not to do in this book.
'Whale Talk' is a tough book, but it is also a compassionate book about telling the truth and about redemption. I didn't draw the tough parts out of thin air; they are stories handed to me by people in pain.
I used to write about experiences that a 20-year-old would write about - going out with your friends, having a drink. You know, things were a little bit sexier in a different way. Now, you know, I'm a mom, and I want to filter some of the things that I say.
I have, my whole life, been healing the girl inside, the part of me that struggles about being a female in the world. That's why I write about the things I write about.
One thing about hanging out with a baby is that you can remember a little bit better what it was like to be a kid, and all the mystery that came along with it.
. . . the whole idea of WHAT HAPPENED WAS.... is not about dating. It is more about people who are not committed to who they are or are indifferent about their life in general, which is how I felt about myself when I wrote it. I had turned 40 and I was unhappy and I wanted to write about that. Dating just became the framework. . . . I like all those fringy, weird, nonverbal, quiet, tiny little things, those powerful interchanges between people, things that go unsaid, that people know are happening all the time but nobody wants to talk about. That's what I want to make movies about.
I'm just out of touch with new music in general, and I only know about it if I'm hanging out with someone that knows about it, or I catch it on YouTube.
Getting a book published made me feel a little bit sad. I felt driven by the need to write a book, rather than the need to write. I needed to figure out what was important to me as a writer.
Getting a book published made me feel a little bit sad... I felt driven by the need to write a book, rather than the need to write. I needed to figure out what was important to me as a writer.
I definitely write about things that are universal, that everyone can identify with. You're supposed to write about things you're passionate about and I guess I am a foodie. I do love food and it's kind of like I'm an eccentric observationalist guy. To make it kind of universal, I try a lot of different things. When I first started writing this, I was like, 'No food.' Then, you know, it just always goes there.
How did you escape? (Syd) I fought my way out in a manner that would have made Rambo proud. And when I got home without his body because I couldn’t pull him out without getting myself killed, I got slapped in my face by everyone around me. So don’t talk to me about death, little girl. I wrote the book on it. (Steele)
A good man likes a hard boss. I don't mean a nagging boss or a grouchy boss. I mean a boss who insists on things being done right and on time; a boss who is watching things closely enough so that he knows a good job from a poor one. Nothing is more discouraging to a good man than a boss who is not on the job, and who does not know whether things are going well or badly.
Adaptation is always the same process for me, which is some version of throwing the book at the wall and seeing what pages fall out. It is trying to imagine, remember the story, read it, put it down, and then write sort of an outline without the book in front of you with some hope that what you like about it will be filtered and distilled out through your memory and then that will be similar to what other people like about it.
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