Bossypants Quotes

“You must not look in that mirror at your doughy legs and flat feet, for today is about dreams and illusions, and unfiltered natural daylight is the enemy of dreams.”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

“When hiring, mix Harvard Nerds with Chicago Improvisers and stir.”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

“Ah, babies! They’re more than just adorable little creatures on whom you can blame your farts.”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

“My parents raised me that you never ask people about their reproductive plans. “You don’t know their situation,” my mom would say. I considered it such an impolite question that for years I didn’t even ask myself. Thirty-five turned into forty faster than McDonald’s food turns into cold nonfood.”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

“As an improviser, I always find it jarring when I meet someone in real life whose first answer is no. “No, we can’t do that.” “No, that’s not in the budget.” “No, I will not hold your hand for a dollar.” What kind of way is that to live?”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

“You know who DOES have a funny bone in her body? Your Mom every night for a dollar!”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

“There was a rich old guy named John Donnelly who must have donated a bunch of money. He had forgotten his member card one day, and when I tried to explain that it was a four-dollar fee to enter without a card, he went batshit. "Don't you know who I am, goddammit?" I had never seen him before. "Do you know who I am?" I wanted to say. "Then how could I know who you are? We don't know each other.”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

“Sometimes if you have a difficult decisin to make, just stall until the answer presents itself.”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

“This requires a level of delusion/egomania usually reserved for popes and drag queens”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

“One afternoon a girl walked by in a bikini and my cousin Janet scoffed, “Look at the hips on her.” I panicked. What about the hips? Were they too big? Too small? What were my hips? I didn’t know hips could be a problem. I thought there was just fat or skinny. This was how I found out that there are an infinite number of things that can be “incorrect” on a woman’s body.”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

“It is an impressively arrogant move to conclude that just because you don't like something, it is empirically not good.”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

“I would not trade any of these features for anybody else’s. I wouldn’t trade the small thin-lipped mouth that makes me resemble my nephew. I wouldn’t even trade the acne scar on my right cheek, because that recurring zit spent more time with me in college than any boy ever did.”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

“I’ll be ready for it to happen and that way it won’t happen. It’s a burden, being able to control situations with my hyper-vigilance, but it’s my lot in life.”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

“I was ten years old. I had noticed something was weird earlier in the day but I knew from commercials that one's menstrual period was a blue liquid that you poured like laundry detergent onto maxi pads to test their absorbency. This wasn't blue so...I ignored it for a few hours.

When we got home I pulled my mom aside to ask if it was weird I was bleeding in my underpants. She was very sympathetic but also a little baffled. Her eyes said "Dummy didn't you read 'How Shall I Tell My Daughter ". I HAD read it but nowhere in the pamphlet did anyone say that your period was NOT a blue liquid.

At that moment two things became clear to me I was now technically a woman and I would never be a doctor.”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

“[...] things most people do naturally are often inexplicably difficult for me.”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

“I’ve always been able to tell a lot about people by whether they ask me about my scar. Most people never ask, but if it comes up naturally somehow and I offer up the story, they are quite interested. Some people are just dumb: 'Did a cat scratch you?' God bless. Those sweet dumdums I never mind. Sometimes it is a fun sociology litmus test, like when my friend Ricky asked me, 'Did they ever catch the black guy that did that to you?' Hmmm. It was not a black guy, Ricky, and I never said it was.”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

“Anytime there's a bad female stand-up somewhere, some dickhead Interblogger will deduce that “women aren't funny.” Using that same math, I can state: Male comedy writers piss in cups.”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

“Am I just chasing it because it's the hardest thing for me to get and I want to prove I can do it?”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

“It's like being a little kid again, parading around in a nightgown tucked into your underpants, believing it looks terrific.”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

“I was wearing my best Gap turtleneck and my dates were two adult lesbians, so yea, I was pretty cool.”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

“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.”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

“I prefer the retro chic of spending Christmas just like Joseph and Mary did - Traveling arduously back to the place of your birth to be counted, with no guarantee of a bed when you get there.”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

“The more New Yorkers like something, the more disgusted they are. "The kitchen was all Sub-Zero: I want to kill myself. The building has a playroom that makes you want to break your own jaw with a golf club. I can't take it.”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

“I was taken to an examining room where a big butch nurse practitioner came in and asked me if I was pregnant. “No way!” Was I sexually active? “Nope!” Had I ever been molested? “Well,” I said, trying to make a joke, “Oprah says the only answers to that question are ‘Yes’ and ‘I don’t remember.’ ” I laughed. We were having fun. The nurse looked at me, concerned/annoyed.”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

“Sometimes you want to have a very productive Saturday to feel that you are in control of your life, which of course you are not.”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

“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.”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

“When actors are too good-looking, I can’t memorize them. For example, I have never seen a picture of Sienna Miller where I didn’t say, “That girl’s pretty. Who is that?”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

“If you are a woman and you bought this book for practical tips on how to make it in a male-dominated workplace, here they are. No pigtails, no tube tops. Cry sparingly. (Some people say “Never let them see you cry.” I say, if you’re so mad you could just cry, then cry. It terrifies everyone.)”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

“We are a society that constantly celebrates no one but women and it must stop! I want to hear what the men of the world have been up to. What fun new guns have they invented? What are they raping these days? What’s Michael Bay’s next film going to be?”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

“The show doesn’t go on because it’s ready; it goes on because it’s 11:30.

This is something Lorne [Michaels] has said often about Saturday Night Live, but I think it’s a great lesson about not being too precious about your writing. You have to try your hardest to be at the top of your game and improve every joke you can until the last possible second, and then you have to let it go.

You can’t be that kid standing at the top of the waterslide, overthinking it. You have to go down the chute. (And I’m from a generation where a lot of people died on waterslides, so this was an important lesson for me to learn.) You have to let people see what you wrote. It will never be perfect, but perfect is overrated. Perfect is boring on live TV.

What I learned about ‘bombing’ as an improviser at Second City was that bombing is painful, but it doesn’t kill you. No matter how badly an improv set goes, you will still be physically alive when it’s over. What I learned about bombing as a writer at Saturday Night is that you can’t be too worried about your ‘permanent record.’ Yes, you’re going to write some sketches that you love and are proud of forever—your golden nuggets. But you’re also going to write some real shit nuggets. And unfortunately, sometimes the shit nuggets will make it onto the air. You can’t worry about it. As long as you know the difference, you can go back to panning for gold on Monday.”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants