Mindy Kaling

“In the Shakespearean comedies, the wedding is the end, and there isn't much indication of what happily ever after will look like day to day. 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 for the next forty years.”

“I will miss her dearly, and I hope that she is up in heaven right now watching us and smiling, even though deep down I know that if there is an afterlife, she’s a pretty much open-and-shut case for hell.”

“No pasta. I’m serious. I will climb out of my coffin if anyone brings a baked ziti.”

“You might also see that some of my playlists are simply two songs on repeat fifteen times, like I’m a psycho getting pumped up to murder the president.”

“I would rather have someone read my diary than look at my iPod playlists.”

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

“When I was twenty-five, I went on exactly four dates with a much older guy whom I’ll call Peter Parker. I’m calling him Peter Parker because the actual guy’s name was also alliterative, and because, well, it’s my book and I’ll name a guy I dated after Spider-Man’s alter ego if I want to.”

“Boys are adorable. Boys trail off their sentences in an appealing way. Boys bring a knapsack to work. Boys get haircuts from their roommate, who “totally knows how to cut hair.” Boys can pack up their whole life in a duffel bag and move to Brooklyn for a gig if they need to. Boys have “gigs.” Boys are broke. And when they do have money, they spend it on a trip to Colorado to see a music festival. Boys don’t know how to adjust their conversation when they’re talking to their friends or to your parents. They put parents on the same level as their peers and roll their eyes when your dad makes a terrible pun. Boys let your parents pay for dinner when you all go out. It’s assumed.”

“Men know what they want. Men make concrete plans. Men own alarm clocks. Men sleep on a mattress that isn’t on the floor. Men tip generously. Men buy new shampoo instead of adding water to a nearly empty bottle of shampoo. Men go to the dentist. Men make reservations. Men go in for a kiss without giving you some long preamble about how they’re thinking of kissing you. Men wear clothes that have never been worn by anyone else before. (Okay, maybe men aren’t exactly like this. This is what I’ve cobbled together from the handful of men I know or know of, ranging from Heathcliff Huxtable to Theodore Roosevelt to my dad.) Men know what they want and they don’t let you in on their inner monologue, and that is scary.”

“I know a small part of you thinks you could’ve ended up with Natalie Portman if you had played things a little differently. That’s nice. You can have that. That’s not hurting anybody.”

“What? I have a cold. Don’t get a look of terror on your face. The worst that could happen is that you’ll get a cold, too. You don’t have to theatrically Purell a thousand times a day and look all panicky every time I come into the room.”

“My version of an Irish exit has an air of deception to it, because it includes my asking loudly, “Where’s the bathroom?” and making theatrical looking-around gestures like a lost foreign tourist. But then, instead of finding the bathroom, I sneakily grab my coat and leave.”

“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.”

“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.”

“As you can see, when I write, I like to look like I’m recovering from tuberculosis.”

“There was silence. No one looked at me. People pretended to be absorbed in their phones. One writer didn’t even have a phone, so he just pretended to be absorbed in his hand.”

“If you look closely, you can see this woman’s ribs through the dress she’s wearing— that’s how skinny she is, this cheesecake-loving cow.”

“Our Klutz clangs into Stop signs while riding a bike, and knocks over giant displays of expensive fine china. Despite being five foot nine and weighing 110 pounds, she is basically like a drunk buffalo who has never been a part of human society. But Fred Tom loves her anyway.”

“A not 100-percent-perfect-looking-in-every-way female? You might as well film a dead squid decaying on a beach somewhere for two hours.”

“Bennifer was so big it was as though two people had never been in love before, and they had discovered it.”

“How is your love life, Minz?” she would ask hungrily, hoping to be entertained by raunchy details.I had none. “Um, you know. So hard to meet guys,” I answered vaguely, hoping my lack of a sex life would seem mysterious and not pathetic.”

“(Thank you, Teach for America! Luring away America’s finest minds so that the rest of us can snatch up their jobs.)”

“So, with my zit throbbing like a nightclub, I went to the interview.”

“Bribes and boy bands. That’s all you need to be a babysitter.”

“So it was surprising that I killed it as a babysitter. Er, maybe “killed it” is a wrong and potentially troubling way to express what I’m trying to say.”

“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.”

“And when I say the Fashion Police, of course I’m speaking of the small group of screeching gay guys and fashion “experts” on that E! show led by the reanimated corpse of Joan Rivers.”

“So things were coming together nicely for me to embark on a full-fledged depression. One good thing about New York is that most people function daily while in a low-grade depression.”

“And the stairs. Oh, the stairs. The staircase in our third-floor walk-up was the steepest, hardest, metal-est staircase I have ever encountered in my life. It was a staircase for killing someone and making it seem like an accident.”

“I had placed a lot of faith in Woody Allen’s belief that 80 percent of success is just showing up. I said to myself: Are you serious? 80 percent? Sure, I can just show up. Here I am, New York! Give me a job!”

“Bren was the kind of best friend I dreamed about having when I was a little kid. I never knew you could have someone in your life who was pretty much on the same page about essentially everything.”

“If you’re a kid who was not especially a star in your high school, I recommend going to a college in the middle of nowhere. I got all the attention I could ever have wanted.”

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

“I want you to picture me as a cute little anime character that popped out from behind a mushroom or something and landed in Hollywood.”

“Even though Mavis was my secret friend, she is the only one I hope I see again. She’s the only one I wonder about. I hope she wonders about me too.”

“Be like Allan Pearl. Sit next to the class clown and study him. Then grow up, take everything you learned, and get paid to be a real-life clown, unlike whatever unexciting thing the actual high school class clown is doing now.”

“As it is, I guess I find “Jack & Diane” a little disgusting.As a child of immigrant professionals, I can’t help but notice the wasteful frivolity of it all. Why are these kids not home doing their homework? Why aren’t they setting the table for dinner or helping out around the house? Who allows their kids to hang out in parking lots? Isn’t that loitering?”

“It’s one of those songs— like Eric Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven”— that everyone knows all the words to without ever having chosen to learn them.”

“Ultimately, the main reasons why I will be chubby for life are (1) I have virtually no hobbies except dieting. I can’t speak any non-English languages, knit, ski, scrapbook, or cook. I have no pets. I don’t know how to do drugs. I lost my passport three years ago when I moved into my house and never got it renewed. Video games scare me because they all seem to simulate situations I’d hate to be in, like war or stealing cars. So if I ever lost weight I would also lose my only hobby; (2) I have no discipline; I’m like if Private Benjamin had never toughened up but, in fact, got worse; (3) Guys I’ve dated have been into me the way I am; and (4) I’m pretty happy with the way I look, so long as I don’t break a beach chair.”

“What’s that? You’ve never heard of the freshman thirty-five? That’s funny, because neither had my parents, who welcomed me home on spring vacation with mild horror. I was a vaguely familiar food monster who had eaten their daughter.”

“Mom was impressed but didn’t want me to go overboard, which was impossible, because I was still eating a lot. I just had taken a break from eating like a professional football player.”

“He was so popular you could barely look at him without being blinded by cool.”

“My mom’s a doctor, but because she came from India and then Africa, where childhood obesity was not a problem, she put no premium on having skinny kids. In fact, she and my dad didn’t mind having a chubby daughter. Part of me wonders if it even made them feel a little prosperous, like Have you seen our overweight Indian child? Do you know how statistically rare this is?”

“What else should I know?(1) There is no sunrise so beautiful that it is worth waking me up to see it.(2) I would like to be friends with Beyoncé Knowles.”

“Unfortunately, I can’t be Tina, because it’s very difficult to lure her into a Freaky Friday– type situation where we could switch bodies, even though in the movies they make it look so easy. Believe me, I’ve tried.”

“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.”

“Why didn’t you talk about whether women are funny or not? I just felt that by commenting on that in any real way, it would be tacit approval of it as a legitimate debate, which it isn’t.”

“Everyone has a moment when they discover they love Amy Poehler.”

“There have been times when friends have said they hooked up with someone and all it means is that they had a highly anticipated kissing session. Other times it's a full-on all-night sex-a-thon. Can't we have a universal understanding of the term, once and for all? From now on, let's all agree that hooking up = sex. Everything else is "made out." And if you're older than twenty-eight, then just kissing someone doesn't count for crap and is not even worth mentioning. Unless you're Mormon, in which case you're going to hell. There, I think we're all on the same page.”

“If I’m at a party where I’m not enjoying myself, I will put some cookies in my jacket pocket and leave without saying good-bye.”