Mindy Kaling

Mindy Kaling: (on when her character Kelly on the TV show The Office came into her own) I think in "Valentine's Day," in season two, when she had hooked up with Ryan, and you get to see her. When Jim asked her, "Hey, how are you?" and she goes on for a page and a half of dialogue about what happened to her the day before, I really felt like I had an idea of what Kelly was about.

Mindy Kaling: (on why she was better suited to play Ben Affleck that Matt Damon is the play Matt and Ben she wrote) My friend [and Matt And Ben costar] Brenda is about six inches taller than me, I'm 5'3". For some reason, it was that obvious reversal, it just seemed like it would be funnier if the shorter, more petite person would play the more macho character. I don't even know if it was conscious decision-making. I was just so drawn to that character from the very beginning. Before we even knew it was a play. I just wanted to play that guy. Maybe because it was just the opposite of the way my voice is, which sounds like an 11-year-old girl. It just seemed more of a fun stretch, for me to play the less fastidious, goofy guy.

Mindy Kaling: (on the first joke she wrote and liked) 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 when I was a little kid.

Mindy Kaling: (on what drew her to SNL) You know, I think this is not the artsiest answer, but I just loved Dana Carvey. I must have been 10 or 11, but anything Dana Carvey ever did, I just really loved. He was on for a long time, I don't really know when that era was. I could watch Dana Carvey with my parents, they loved him too. They loved all his characters. Later, Adam Sandler and David Spade, most of my friends feel like they were raised on that, but I couldn't watch that with my folks as much, because they did racier things.

Mindy: (On her two favorite characters on The Office) My two favorite characters are ones that didn't even have a line in the first season, which is Toby and Creed, they're my two absolute favorites.

Mindy: (On the success of her show The Office) I guess the humble thing to say would be that I wasn't expecting any of it and we were so fortunate and lucky. But ever since the second episode of the first season, I thought the show was great, and Greg had perfect pace -- Greg Daniels, our show runner -- and it was going to be fantastic, because the writing was awesome and the actors were so cool and talented. So I wasn't surprised; I mean, I was really happy it caught on in the second season instead of, you know, in the fourth season, or like Arrested[Development], which all the critics loved but never got the popular turnout, I guess, in terms of viewers. I was psyched that we finally got people watching.

Mindy: (On the differences between The Office and Saturday Night Live) The great thing about our show is that if it's your script, everyone is just working on it. Nobody is trying to get their own material in because everyone knows your name is going on the episode. It's not an SNL type of competitiveness where everyone is vying for the same spot.

Mindy: I was excited to write -- I mean, that's all I've wanted to do was be a comedy writer -- and acting was a nice cherry on top of the sundae.

Mindy: (about reviews on the first few episodes of The Office) People were really impatient. And I mean, I think the thing that was really troubling for people who really wanted to hate it was that the jokes were good.

Mindy: (joking about working with The Office writing staff) Well, all the guys want to have sex with me all the time. Every day I come to work it's nonstop sexual harassment.

Mindy: (on her "Office" character Kelly) I don't think there are a lot of times when Asians on television get to play total idiots, so it's really freeing.

Mindy: (On the Kelly character) She is an exaggerated version of what I think the upper-level writers believe my personality is.

Mindy: I'm not good at anything except writing jokes.