“Mindy Kaling gets her own line in the acknowledgments, as previously negotiated by her representatives. Thanks, Mindy. I love you and you’re the best.”

Battered Women: sounds delicious. Doesn’t make it right.

It’s not always enough to be brave, I realized years later. You have to be brave and contribute something positive, too. Brave on its own is just a party trick.

Travel is impossible, but daydreaming about travel is easy.

Nobody remembers how long anything takes; they only remember how good it was in the end.

If people are well paid for reality television and cotton candy and dunking a basketball, why can’t they be well paid for changing young minds?

The most exciting thing I aspire to do is to write something new that I know is going to work, or perform something that I know is going to make people laugh.

Regret is just perfectionism plus time.

I think it’s better to not know certain things. It gives the world an extra bit of mystery, which is important to us as human beings.

Different people have different styles, but there is an opportunity as a director to be a writer in every moment, with every visual cue and every piece of production design. Everything is a decision, and everything can be obsessed over.

I wanted to be a writer first, and I struck out in the world to be a writer first, and then found stand-up as a more creative outlet, as a 3D way to be creative.

Perfect. Why was this so hard to find?”The other type of perfect is the type you never could have expected and then could never replicate.

If you love something, let it go. If you don’t love something, definitely let it go. Basically, just drop everything, who cares.

There’s not many good comedies to watch – you know, comedies that make you glad you watched them.

Good comics gravitate to each other; you know who’s your type of person by watching them onstage, hopefully.

I’m a believer in trusting the director.

The Office’ is less a comedy than so many other “comedies” that have been on the air. It’s really about the balance between what is real and what is comic.

All along the line, physically, mentally, morally, alcohol is a weakening and deadening force.

Why is it that the finish line always tends to appear just after the point at which we most want to give up? is it the universe’s way of reserving the best for those who can give the most? What I do know, from nature, is that the dawn only appears after the darkest hour.

The line was originally, ‘Captain Phillips, get a load of me: fancy-free on the seven seas,’ but I ad-libbed.

Almost all countries have natural dividing lines, and when ethnic and religious partition occurs in one country, it’ll soon happen elsewhere.

The times are squalid. They always were. It is a poet’s duty to hold the line.

I find very often people like to confront rumors. It depends on how much they trust you. And you have to have a line between what is tasteful and what isn’t.

I hear these melodies. I hear horn lines and string lines. That’s what’s fun about recording with an orchestra.

One of the flabby lines you hear sometimes is, ‘Speak truth to power’. Power knows the truth. It’s speaking the truth to yourself that’s the challenge.