Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)

by Mindy Kaling

I’m only marginally qualified to be giving advice at all.

Sometimes You Just Have to Put on Lip Gloss and Pretend to Be Psyched

You cannot begin to understand the power of my irrational hatred at twelve years old, but it’s the kind of hatred that lasts.

I want to be so famous and busy that I only ever find these insults amusing, and chuckle at them good-naturedly before I get on my private jet to be a UN ambassador to Cameroon, or wherever.

I’m the kind of person who would rather get my hopes up really high and watch them get dashed to pieces than wisely keep my expectations at bay and hope they are exceeded. This quality has made me a needy and theatrical friend, but has given me a spectacularly dramatic emotional life.

(Let me take a moment here to stress again just how pervasive the Sex and the City culture was in New York in 2002. You could be an NYU freshman, a Metropolitan Transit Authority worker, or an Orthodox Jewish woman living in a yeshiva: you watched Sex and the City.)

Manic Pixie Dream Girl

The job of comedy writer is essentially to sit and have funny conversations about hypothetical situations, and you are rewarded for originality of detail.

in New York City in 2006.