Whether you know her from her role on The Office as Kelly Kapoor, her show The Mindy Project, as the author of Is Everybody Hanging Out Without Me?, or actor and writer, B.J. Novak’s, on-and-off-again girlfriend—Mindy Kaling is quickly becoming a household name.
But, as someone who follows her career semi-closely in the least-stalker-ish-way possible, I can tell you she has a lot more to offer than just laughs—she also has great advice and insight on love, relationships, career, and style– and delivers these tid bits in the most relatable ways possible.
Below are 10 times Mindy Kaling completely understood your existence.
1. On the necessity of sleep
“There is no sunrise so beautiful that it is worth waking me up to see it.”
2. On getting revenge
“You should know I disagree with a lot of traditional advice. For instance, they say the best revenge is living well. I say it’s acid in the face—who will love them now?”
3. On being popular
“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.”
4. On having high expectations
“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.”
5. On keeping your head high
“Sometimes you just have to put on lip gloss and pretend to be psyched.”
6. On Rom-Coms
“I simply regard romantic comedies as a sub-genre of sci-fi, in which the world created therein has different rules than my regular human world.”
7. On being polite
“I don’t think it should be socially acceptable for people to say they are “bad with names.” No one is bad with names. That is not a real thing. Not knowing people’s names isn’t a neurological condition; it’s a choice. You choose not to make learning people’s names a priority. It’s like saying, “Hey, a disclaimer about me: I’m rude.”
8. On not feeling like a great role model
“I’m only marginally qualified to be giving advice at all. My body mass index is certainly not ideal, I frequently use my debit card to buy things that cost less than three dollars because I never have cash on me, and my bedroom is so untidy it looks like vandals ransacked the Anthropologie Sale section. I’m kind of a mess.”
9. On relationships and commitment
“I don’t want to hear about the endless struggles to keep sex exciting, or the work it takes to plan a date night. I want to hear that you guys watch every episode of The Bachelorette together in secret shame, or that one got the other hooked on Breaking Bad and if either watches it without the other, they’re dead meat. I want to see you guys high-five each other like teammates on a recreational softball team you both do for fun.”
“I think when men hear that 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 anywhere. I want a guy who is entrenched in his own life.”
10. On complimenting women
“When you think a girl looks pretty, say it. But don’t reference the thing that might reveal you are aware of the backstage process: e.g., say, “You look gorgeous tonight,” not “I like how you did your makeup tonight.” Also, a compliment means less if you compliment the thing and not the way the girl is carrying it off. So say, “You look so sexy in those boots,” rather than “Those boots are really cool.” I didn’t make the boots! I don’t care if you like the boots’ design! We are magic to you: you have no idea how we got to look as good as we do.”
