Tina Fey, Bossypants

"This is one of the weird things about motherhood. You can predict that some of your best moments will happen around the toilet at six am while you're holding a pile of fingernail clipping like a Santeria priestess."

"And when she [her daughter] one day turns on me and calls me a Bitch in front of Hollister, Give me the strength, Lord, to yank her directly into a cab in front of her friends,For I will not have that Shit. I will not have it."

"That night's show was watched by ten million people, so I guess that director at The Second City who said the audience "didn't want to see a sketch with two women" can go shit in his hat."

"The second rule of improvisation is not only to say yes, but YES, AND. You are supposed to agree and then _add something of your own._ If I start a scene with 'I can't believe it's so hot in here,' and you just say, 'Yeah...' we're kind of at a stand-still. But if I say, 'I can't believe it's so hot in here,' and you say, 'What did you expect? We're in hell.' Or if I say, 'I can't believe it's so hot in here,' and you say, 'Yes, this can't be good for the wax figures.' Or if I say, 'I can't believe it's so hot in here,' and you say, 'I told you we shouldn't have crawled into this dog's mouth,' now we're getting somewhere."

"The first rule of improvisation is AGREE. Always agree and SAY YES. When you're improvising, this means you are required to agree with whatever your partner has created. So if we're improvising and I say, 'Freeze, I have a gun,' and you say, 'That's not a gun. It's your finger. You're pointing your finger at me,' our improvised scene has ground to a halt. But if I say, 'Freeze, I have a gun!' and you say, 'The gun I gave you for Christmas! You bastard!' then we have started a scene because we have AGREED that my finger is in fact a Christmas gun."

"So, to sum up my room-clearing generalizations, men are in comedy to break rules."

"I was walking home alone from school and I was wearing a dress. A dude drove by and yelled, "Nice tits." Embarrassed and enraged, I screamed after him, "Suck my dick."

"Only in comedy, by the way, does an obedient white girl from the suburbs count as diversity"

"This worked out perfectly for me in college, because what nineteen-year-old Virginia boy doesn't want a wide-hipped, sarcastic Greek girl with short hair that's permed on top? What's that you say? None of them want that? You are correct."

"In improv there are no mistakes, only beautiful happy accidents. And many of the world’s greatest discoveries have been by accident."

"My first job as assistant director was to make sure he didn't cast the talented blond dancer who had so easily stolen my boyfriend the summer before. I accomplished this with the persistent and skilled manipulation of a grade A bitch."

"(My ability to turn good news into anxiety is rivaled only by my ability to turn anxiety into chin acne.)"

"Someone should do a study of the human brain and how quickly it can adjust to luxury."

"Everyone is quiet. Which is the wooooooorst. It’s scary when a group of people all know instinctively not to joke around."

"I have one top-notch baby with whom I am in love. It's a head-over-heels "first love" kind of thing, because I pay for everything and all we do is hold hands."

"Was it too much to expect the rest of the world to care about grammar or pay attention to details?"

"What is he rudest question you can ask a woman? 'How old are you' 'What do you weigh' No, the worst question is 'How do you juggle it all' people constantly ask me, with an accusatory look in their eyes. 'You're fucking it all up, aren't you' their eyes say. My standard answer is that I have the same struggles as any working parent but with the good fortune of working my dream job."

"We spent days and weeks doing nothing, calling one another ten times a day to schedule our nothing-doing."

"In 1995, each cast at The Second City was made up of four men and two women. When it was suggested that they switch one of the companies to three men and three women, the producers and directors had the same panicked reaction. 'You can't do that. There won't be enough parts to go around. There won't be enough for the girls.' This made no sense to me, probably because I speak English and have never had a head injury. We weren't doing _Death of a Salesman._ _We were making up the show ourselves. How could there not be enough parts?_ If everyone had something to contribute, there would be enough. The insulting implication, of course, was that the women wouldn't have any ideas."

"My unsolicited advice to women in the workplace is this. When faced with sexism or ageism or lookism or even really aggressive Buddhism, ask yourself the following question: “Is this person in between me and what I want to do? If the answer is no, ignore it and move on. Your energy is better used doing your work and outpacing people that way. Then, when you’re in charge, don’t hire the people who were jerky to you. If the answer is yes, you have a more difficult road ahead of you. I suggest you model your strategy after the old Sesame Street film piece, "Over! Under! Through!” (If you’re under forty, you might not remember this film. It taught the concepts of, “over,” and “under,” and “through” by filming toddlers crawling around an abandoned construction site. They don’t show it anymore because someone has since realized that’s nuts.) If your boss is a jerk, try to find someone above or around your boss who is not a jerk. If you’re lucky, your workplace will have a neutral proving ground- like the rifle range or a car sales total board or the SNL read-through. If so, focus on that. Again, don’t waste your energy trying to educate or change opinions. Go “Over! Under! Through!” and opinions will change organically when you’re the boss. Or they won’t. Who cares? Do your thing and don’t care if they like it."