Quotes from Mindy Kaling

I would love if gay men responded to me. All I want is for many gay men to dress up as me for Halloween.

I really love 'Bridget Jones's Diary' - and I love the book, too. You wonder how it ever got made into a movie. She's supposed to be chubby, and two of the hottest guys ever are straight-up fighting over her?

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 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!

A remarkable thing about me is that the time that elapses between a sad thought and a flood of tears is three or four seconds.

I feel like the high-concept shows that have some kind of gimmick tend not to be the hit classic shows of all time.

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.

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.

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

When men hear women want a commitment, they think it means commitment to a romantic relationship, but that's not it. It's a commitment to not floating around anymore. I want a guy who is entrenched in his own life. Entrenched is awesome.

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 fall into that nebulous, quote-unquote, normal American woman size that legions of fashion stylists detest. For the record, I'm a size 8 - this week, anyway. Many stylists hate that size because I think to them, it shows that I lack the discipline to be an ascetic; or the confident, sassy abandon to be a total fatty hedonist.

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 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.

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.

Sometimes I eavesdrop on people. I could rationalize it - oh, this is good anthropological research for characters I'm writing - but it's basically just nosiness. It also helps me gauge where I'm at: Am I normal?

When I was a little kid, I wrote this play about all these characters living in a haunted house. There was a witch who lived there, and a mummy. When they were all hassling him, this guy who bought the house - I can't believe I remember this - he said to them, 'Who's paying the mortgage on this haunted house?' I thought that was really funny.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Future hipsters will love me ironically.