Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? Quotes

“I will employ the gentle, vague expression “I’m not crazy about that on you,” which should mean to you, “Holy shit, take that off, that looks terrible!” I owe it to you to give feedback like a cattle prod: painful but quick.”
― Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

“I find it extremely impossible not to cry when I hear Stevie Nicks’s “Landslide,” especially the lyric: “I’ve been afraid of changing, because I’ve built my life around you.” I think a good test to see if a human is actually a robot/android/cylon is to have them listen to this song lyric and study their reaction. If they don’t cry, you should stab them through the heart. You will find a fusebox.”
― Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

“A note about me: I do not think stress is a legitimate topic of conversation, in public anyway. No one ever wants to hear how stressed out anyone else is, because most of the time everyone is stressed out. Going on and on in detail about how stressed out I am isn’t conversation. It’ll never lead anywhere. No one is going to say, “Wow, Mindy, you really have it especially bad. I have heard some stories of stress, but this just takes the cake.” This is entirely because my parents are immigrant professionals, and talking about one’s stress level was just totally outlandish to them. When I was three years old my mom was in the middle of her medical residency in Boston. She had been a practicing obstetrician and gynecologist in Nigeria, but in the United States she was required to do her residency all over again. She’d get up at 4:00 a.m. and prepare breakfast, lunch, and dinner for my brother and me, because she knew she wouldn’t be home in time to have dinner with us. Then she’d leave by 5:30 a.m. to start rounds at the hospital. My dad, an architect, had a contract for a building in New Haven, Connecticut, which was two hours and forty-five minutes away. It would’ve been easier for him to move to New Haven for the time of the construction of the building, but then who would have taken care of us when my mom was at the hospital at night? In my parents’ vivid imaginations, lack of at least one parent’s supervision was a gateway to drugs, kidnapping, or at the very minimum, too much television watching. In order to spend time with us and save money for our family, my dad dropped us off at school, commuted the two hours and forty-five minutes every morning, and then returned in time to pick us up from our after-school program. Then he came home and boiled us hot dogs as an after-school snack, even though he was a vegetarian and had never eaten a hot dog before. In my entire life, I never once heard either of my parents say they were stressed. That was just not a phrase I grew up being allowed to say. That, and the concept of “Me time.”
― Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

“The reason I pull Irish exits is not because I think I'm too busy and cool to be bothered with pleasantries. It's that when there is a gathering of more than thirty people I don't want to waste your time with hellos and good-byes. I think it's actually the more polite thing to do, because I'm not coercing partygoers into some big farewell moment with me. Then other people feel like they have to stop what they're doing and hug me, too. It's time-wasting dominoes.”
― Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

“...stay in school and be a respectful and hardworking wallflower, and go to an accredited non-online university”
― Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

“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.”
― Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

“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.”
― Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

“Bennifer was so big it was as though two people had never been in love before, and they had discovered it.”
― Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

“(Thank you, Teach for America! Luring away America’s finest minds so that the rest of us can snatch up their jobs.)”
― Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

“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.”
― Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

“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.”
― Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

“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.”
― Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

“Your girlfriend's sibling or parents might be totally nuts, but always defend them. Always. All a girl wants to do is to get along with her family and if you are on the side of making it easy, you will be loved eternally. It might be easier to condemn them - especially if she's doing that already - but, remarkably, even if they are murderers, she will find the good in them, especially if you start trashing them.”
― Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

“I liked hanging out with my family! Later, when you’re grown up, you realize you never get to hang out with your family. You pretty much have only eighteen years to spend with them full time, and that’s it. So, yeah, it all added up to a happy, memorable time. Even though I was never a star.”
― Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

“When I played the “I don’t feel comfortable” card, he knew it was over. “I don’t feel comfortable” is the classic manipulative girl get-my-way line. It’s right up there with “I don’t feel entirely safe.” Was it fair? Nope. Was it cool? Absolutely not. But it also wasn’t fair or cool for him to have brought three dozen size-zero gowns to my photo shoot.”
― Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

“They say the best revenge is living well. I say it's acid in the face -- who will love them now?”
― Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

“With no music to listen to, I just biked around in circles talking to myself like a kid on the cover of a Robert Cormier young adult novel, circling around puzzled Jewish families walking back to their cars. This is how I learned to ride a bike.”
― Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

“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.”
― Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

“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.”
― Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

“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.”
― Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

“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?”
― Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

“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.”
― Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

“Teenage girls, please don’t worry about being super popular in high school, or being the best actress in high school, or the best athlete. Not only do people not care about any of that the second you graduate, but when you get older, if you reference your successes in high school too much, it actually makes you look kind of pitiful, like some babbling old Tennessee Williams character with nothing else going on in her current life. What I’ve noticed is that almost no one who was a big star in high school is also big star later in life. For us overlooked kids, it’s so wonderfully fair.”
― Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

“The Skinny Woman Who Is Beautiful and Toned but Also Gluttonous and Disgusting

Again, I am more than willing to suspend my disbelief for good set decoration alone. One pristine kitchen from a Nancy Meyers movie like “It’s Complicated” compensates for five scenes of Diane Keaton being caught half naked in a topiary. But I can’t suspend disbelief enough, for instance, if the gorgeous and skinny heroine is also a ravenous pig when it comes to food. And everyone in the movie—her parents, her friends, her boss—are all complicit in this huge lie. They constantly tell her to stop eating. And this actress, this poor skinny actress who obviously lost weight to play the likable lead character, has to say things like “Shut up, you guys! I love cheesecake! If I want to eat an entire cheesecake, I will!” 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.”
― Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

“Her work ethic was second to none. And by that I mean: if you made a list of all the levels of work ethics, hers would be just above “none".”
― Michael Schur, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

“It was October 2001 and I lived in New York City. I was twenty two. I, like many of my female friends, suffered from a strange combination of post 9/11 anxiety and height of Sex and the City anxiety. They are distinct and unnerving anxieties. The questions that ran through my ming were something like this: 'Should I keep a gas mask in my kitchen? Am I supposed to be able to afford Manolo Blahnik shoes? What is Barneys New York? You're trying to tell me a place called 'Barney's' is fancy?'Where are the fabulous gay friends that I was promised? Gay guys hate me! Is this anthrax or powdered sugar? Help! Help!”
― Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

“Being called fat is not like being called stupid or unfunny, which is the worst thing you could ever say to me.”
― Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

“I just want ambitious teenagers to know it is totally fine to be quiet, observant kids. Besides being a delight to your parents, you will find you have plenty of time later to catch up. So many people I work with—famous actors, accomplished writers—were overlooked in high school. 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.”
― Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

“As a kid, I was curious but not remotely adventurous, if that makes sense.”
― Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

“It was October 2001 and I lived in New York City. I was twenty-two. I, like many of my female friends, suffered from a strange combination of post-9/11 anxiety and height-of-Sex-and-the-City anxiety. They are distinct and unnerving anxieties. The questions that ran through my mind went something like this: Should I keep a gas mask in my kitchen? Am I supposed to be able to afford Manolo Blahnik shoes? What is Barneys New York? You’re trying to tell me a place called “Barneys” is fancy? Where are the fabulous gay friends I was promised? Gay guys hate me! Is this anthrax or powdered sugar? Help! Help!”
― Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?