Mindy Kaling Quotes

I think I have a gift, but I haven't really opened that gift yet and given it to myself.

I have nothing against smaller roles; they made me what I am today. But, progression is the way of life.

No one ever told me I had a good voice or anything; no one ever told me I could sing. They just let me get on with it.

Sometimes those who start out the slowest end up going the farthest.

I've been looking for ways to audition more, because it also keeps me sharp and keeps my ambition at its firm edge. That's something that I'm actively engaged in conversations about now with my reps: What's out there that I can really either put myself on tape for, or meet with the director for and read for? How do we do that? We're now at the end of the Star Trek reboot trilogies and whether we are going to do another movie remains to be seen, and so I feel like I'm at the end of this cycle that began with me coming out of school and auditioning and building my way up.

The desire to reach for the stars is ambitious. The desire to reach hearts is wise.

What you haven't done by thirty you're not likely to do. What you have done you'll do lots more.

You don't want to peak in high school. If you do, the rest of your life is a disaster.

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.

Try to remember that being unsuccessful in school doesn't automatically mean you'll be unsuccessful in life. Lots of people who didn't excel in school still went on to have successful lives.

A lot of times, when you start a show at a young age, you get stuck. You get six years of high school, but I didn't have that.

I always think back to my high school days and realize all the people who were so popular then are nowhere now and all the people who were steadfast and steady-going are somewhere. So high school doesn't necessarily translate to later in life.

I can reach a kid who doesn't have any ability as long as he doesn't know it.

Graduating high school was really emotional for me. I'd obviously made a huge thing out of what that experience was for me, and saying goodbye to it was very weird. So I had to be like, boom, onward and upward.

I knew that when I left there at the age of 18, I wouldn't be back. And it was common knowledge among all the people there that when you graduate from high school here, you go to college or go get a job or something and do it on your own.

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen.

If you'd have asked me when I was auditioning for High School Musical if I ever thought I was going to play a Marine.

You will make a lousy anybody else, but you will be the best "you" in existence.

I went to a high school reunion a couple years ago and realized that the kids who were the most unusual in high school are the ones who are the most interesting now and the ones who were popular are dull and boring.

Your dynamic with everyone will change when you graduate high school. High school is a pit of despair. It's a swirling tornado of insecurities and there's really nothing good about it.

There is something in me maybe someday to be written; now it is folded, and folded, and folded, like a note in school.

I didn't think I was good at anything, didn't do well in school. And then in the third grade, I was going to a public school. And the teacher was putting math problems on the board. And I said to myself - it's amazing how you can remember certain incidents at any age that made an impression - I asked myself why is she putting those up when the answers are obvious. And then I saw it wasn't obvious to anybody else in the class. So I said, "Hey, I'm good at something."

I'm kind of grateful that I didn't have any real success until I was older and basically out of high school. I think that was a real confidence boost for me, having it all start that way, in that very privileged position of having him vouch for me.

Life is a never-ending school, and the really important lessons all tend to teach man his proper relation to the environment where he must live.