Tina Fey Quotations

Most of the time you're too busy to think about it. But every now and then you say, 'I work at 'Saturday Night Live,' and that is so cool.

Being a mom has made me so tired. And so happy.

When I started on 'Saturday Night Live,' I had the choice of wearing contact lenses, which I had never worn before, or glasses, in order to be able to read the cue cards.

Someone once said that to make a regular person laugh, you need to dress a guy up like an old lady and push him down the stairs. To make a comedy writer laugh, you have to push a real old lady down the stairs. I don't know who that's attributed to. I think it's Aristophanes. Or Catherine the Great.

I'm not that good looking... nobody is that good looking. I have seen a lot of movie stars, and maybe four are amazing looking. The rest have a team of gay guys who make it happen.

For my first show at 'SNL', I wrote a Bill Clinton sketch, and during our read-through, it wasn't getting any laughs. This weight of embarrassment came over me, and I felt like I was sweating from my spine out. But I realized, 'Okay, that happened, and I did not die.' You've got to experience failure to understand that you can survive it.

If you're an actor and you don't get cast in stuff a lot, then put together a show or hold play-reading nights at your apartment. Make your own opportunities.

You can point any kind of laser at my face, but I don't think Botox is for me. I think it is bad. People who have too much, they look like their faces are full of candles - a shiny, shiny face.

We're all comedy fans in my family. My parents mainly wouldn't let me watch stuff that was either annoying to them, or just garbage. My dad wouldn't let us watch 'The Flintstones' if he was home, because he said it was a rip-off of 'The Honeymooners'. But he would let us stay up really late in the summer and watch old 'Honeymooners'.

I think people fetishize glasses in general. You could put glasses on a rotting pumpkin and people would think it was sexy.

When humor works, it works because it's clarifying what people already feel. It has to come from someplace real.

I don't enjoy any kind of danger or volatility. I don't have that kind of 'I love the bad guys' thing. No, no thank you. I like nice people.

Sometimes people expect that I'm going to be tough. It's not a bad situation. People treat you better. People are on time.

I really love cursing a lot. But as I get older, I realize it's a little unseemly for women of a certain age.

I have two daughters, and we live here in Manhattan, and having gone through the Manhattan kindergarten application process, nothing will ever rival the stress of that.

I still want Oprah to play my best friend. I want to spend time with Oprah.

Somewhere around the fifth or seventh grade I figured out that I could ingratiate myself to people by making them laugh. Essentially, I was just trying to make them like me. But after a while it became part of my identity.

I want to spend time with Oprah, and I don't know what I need to do to make that happen.

When I was going to school in, like, '84 to '88, you didn't have cell phones. There was no e-mail, if you can wrap your brain around that.

The ladies of comedy now are comfortable dressing up. It's not forbidden anymore.

I'm not a mean person, but I have a capacity for it.

I think my level of fame will drop back down. I think it'll recede. In fact, I know it will. That's life on Planet Earth. And I'm okay with that. Besides getting tables at restaurants and special treatment at the airport, what else is there?

Acting is really about showing up that day and telling the writers what you feel like saying.

A Harvard Medical School study has determined that rectal thermometers are still the best way to tell a baby's temperature. Plus, it really teaches the baby who's boss.

I am constantly amazed by Tina Fey. And I am Tina Fey.

Yeah, it's tough being smart and sexy, too. I have to say, I'm really not that attractive. Until I met my husband, I could not get a date. I promise you it's true. My husband Jeff Richmond saw a diamond in the rough and took me in.

Every kid has something they're good at, that you hope they find and gravitate toward.

I do like to start on time; I like to set the bar high for people.

I think for women especially, you need to have a plan. I need to have some other ways to generate income, so I don't have to stretch my face or lift the top of my head with surgery or something.

Mary Tyler Moore was a working woman whose story lines were not always about dating and men. They were about work friendships and relationships, which is what I feel my adult life has mostly been about.

After college, I knew I wanted to work in comedy, so the first thing I did was go to where the comedy was. I moved from Charlottesville to Chicago, because that's where The Second City and Improv Olympics are. You have to go wherever you need to go to study what interests you.

I got a fan letter on the back of a prison menu. And I remember thinking, 'Well, they get pie. It's not so bad. They get pie on the weekends.' I want to say blueberry and also a Boston cream pie. Not so bad.

If you want to make an audience laugh, you dress a man up like an old lady and push her down the stairs. If you want to make comedy writers laugh, you push an actual old lady down the stairs.

I was the editor of the school newspaper and in drama club and choir, so I was not a popular girl in the traditional sense, but I think I was known for being relatively scathing.

I want to thank my parents for somehow raising me to have confidence that is disproportionate with my looks and abilities.

An interim government was set up in Afghanistan. It included two women, one of whom was Minister of Women's Affairs. Man, who'd she have to show here ankles to to get that job?

I don't weigh myself. I just go by if my clothes fit. I try not to participate too much in the incredible amount of wasted energy that women have around dealing with food. I just feel like being healthy is sort of a job requirement to be on TV, and being a writer is so much coping with fatigue and stress, and you just eat. You eat to stay awake.

If you want to be a screenwriter, take an acting class to get a sense of what you're asking actors to do. Learning other skills will help you communicate with people and respect what they do.

I don't like a tremendous amount of conflict. I don't think that fighting and passion are the same thing.

I am extremely square and obedient in nature!

You don't just decide to destroy a person by making up stuff, and no one at 'SNL' is writing to go after someone.

I feel like I represent normalcy in some way.

I work, and then whenever I have any other time, I'm with my daughter, and then I go to sleep. I think you basically have to abandon the dreams of having any other adult activities in your life. You have to go to sleep whenever your child goes to sleep. That's basically how we're doing it.

I don't like my feet. I'm not crazy about anybody's feet. But I have flat feet.

I feel like it's harder to get women to show up for movies.

I really wasn't heavy in high school. But no one feels right in their own skin, particularly in high school.

I'm more of a writer than an actor, and I used to say that I'm mostly an improviser, though I haven't improvised in awhile.

I grew up in a family of Republicans. And when I was 18 and registering to vote, my mom's only instruction was 'You just go in and pull the big Republican lever.' That's my welcome to adulthood. She's like, 'No, don't even read it. Just pull the Republican lever.

I remember failing my Princeton interview. My mom wanted me to apply because ever since I was a kid she had this dream that I would apply to Princeton, but it was just not happening.

I think if you ask any of us here, we all dreamed of ending up on Saturday Night Live. I remember thinking, 'I'll just keep doing this as long as I can get away with it.'

I think part of picking where you live in New York is accepting who you are. Really looking at yourself and going, 'Yeah, I'm not cool enough for the West Village.'

The only way I could get comfortable around people was to make them laugh. I was an obedient girl, and humor was my one form of rebellion. I used comedy to deflect. Like, 'Hey, check out my zit!' - you know, making fun of yourself before someone else has a chance to.

Trying to be a leader in a sort of very atypical workplace like 'Saturday Night Live' forces you to realize that no one wants you to be their leader. If you can help them get their thing on TV or whatever, they want that. But no adult is looking for a role model.

When I was really young, I loved the movie 'White Christmas' - I still do - and I thought Rosemary Clooney was so pretty. When I was, like, nine, I would tell people, 'You know who I kind of look like? Rosemary Clooney.'

My favorite day at '30 Rock' is Thursday when the show airs. At lunch, we screen the episodes. For everyone to watch together, to see the stuff we all worked on, to hear the crew laugh - it's great fun.

Twitter seems like a busman's holiday: just more writing. I have no plans to do it. I'll just stick with my 24/7 webcam. I'm old-fashioned that way.

Even when I was at 'SNL,' I didn't do impersonations. I always wanted to be the kind of person who could do them - I always thought they were the coolest thing on the show - but I didn't have any experience.

I like to delude myself that I'm in the old-Hollywood mode. I just tailor my clothes well and try to keep my skin clear. While it would be great to work out an hour a day, there is something inherently sort of selfish about it. I can't do it.

I like to write about women, not so much about the way they relate to men, but about the way they relate to each other.

I have to say, I'm really not that attractive. Until I met my husband, I could not get a date.

I never get to go to movies, because I'm a mom.

I think the world has too many actresses.

The idea of being in control for the sake of control is not really important to me. If everyone is sharp and doing what they're doing well, you don't really need to be in control all the time.

I dreamed of being an actress when I was a little kid because you don't know then that the writer writes everything the actor is saying. But as I got older, I got into college and became more aware that writing is another option, and I started getting into it, too.

I really admire stand-up, and I think I would have loved to learn how to do it. I think it's terrifying and thrilling. A really cool thing to do. It's a dying art, in a way.

I think everyone's intentions are to become a performer at first. But by the time I was in high school and college, I discovered that I liked writing and that I was probably a little better at it.

I'm married, you know. I love my husband and I have a child.

I didn't get on TV until I was 30, which is really fortunate because you are who you are at that point.

I'm a big fan of 'The Office', both the British and the American versions.

Doing one movie every two years is about all I can handle 'cause, being the creator at '30 Rock', my year there starts in the middle of June and goes back around until March.

I think you basically have to abandon the dreams of having any other adult activities in your life. You have to go to sleep whenever your child goes to sleep.

Researches reported that they developed a "self-healing" plastic that repairs itself if cracked. The plastic will change the way airplanes are built and medicine is practiced. In a related story, Joan Rivers will never die.

President Bush unveiled his new economic stimulus plan this week. It was reported that if the plan passes the president himself would save $44,000 in taxes, Dick Cheney would save $327,000, and you could afford to take the whole family down to Burger King to pick up job applications.

My parents have been very brave about my being here, and I remember after the 11th thinking for sure they were going to say, 'Come home, come home.' Instead, my father gave me a speech about how important it was for me to be brave and stay in New York and keep working. That inspired me quite a bit.

a combustion engine of ambition and disappointment.

there was an assumption that I was personally attacking Sarah Palin by impersonating her on TV. No one ever said it was 'mean' when Chevy Chase played Gerald Ford falling down all the time. No one ever accused Dana Carvey or Darrell Hammond or Dan Aykroyd of 'going too far' in their political impressions. You see what I'm getting at here. I am not mean and Mrs. Palin is not fragile. To imply otherwise is a disservice to us both.

I had my hair in a ponytail and looked my trademark exhausted.

The topic of working moms is a tap-dance recital in a minefield.

We should leave people alone about their weight. Being skinny for a while (provided you actually eat food and don't take pills or smoke to get there) is a perfectly fine pastime. Everyone should try it once, like a super-short haircut or dating a white guy.

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.

There is no one of-woman-born who does not like Red Lobster cheddar biscuits. Anyone who claims otherwise is a liar and a Socialist.

The same ten minutes that magazines urge me to use for sit-ups and triceps dips, I used for sobbing.

Now let me be clear; millions of women around the world nurse their children beautifully for years without giving anybody else a hard time about it. Teat Nazis are a solely western upper-middle-class phenomenon occurring when highly ambitious women experience deprivation from outside modes of achievement.

You can fix it as soon as you get up - you brush and use mouthwash - but there’s something about knowing you woke up with hot-mothball mouth that makes you feel old. I think God designed our mouths to die first to help us slowly transition to the grave.

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.

I felt like that character in Flowers for Algernon. Not Charlie, the lady teacher from the college who realizes, 'I've got to stop dry-humping this mentally challenged guy!

Either way, everything will be fine. But if you have an opinion, please feel free to offer it to me through the gap in the door of a public restroom. Everyone else does.

It’s no more dangerous to society than a radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds.

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 let people see what you wrote.

Luxury cruises were designed to make something unbearable (a two week transatlantic crossing) seem bearable. There's no need to do it now, there are planes. You wouldn't take a vacation where you ride on a stage coach for two months but there's all-you-can-eat shrimp. You wouldn't take a vacation where you had an old-timey appendectomy without anesthesia while steel drums play. You might take a vacation while riding on a camel for two days IF they gave you those little animal towels wearing your sunglasses.

If a bout of "creepy face" sets in, the trick is to look away from the camera between shots and turn back only when necessary. This also limits how much of your soul the camera can steal.

When I first set out to ruin SNL, I didn't think anyone would notice, but i persevered because like you trying to a do a nine- piece jigsaw puzzle, it was a labor of love.

I had to face the fact that I had been using my gay friends as props. They were always supposed to be funny and entertain me and praise me and listen to my problems, and their life was supposed to be a secret that no one wanted to hear about. I wanted them to stay in the “half closet.

...the music seems creepy, like when children sing in a horror movie

...nothing is creepier than a bunch of adults being very quiet.

This requires a level of delusion/egomania usually reserved for popes and drag queens

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?

I learned quickly that trying to force Country Folk to love the Big City is like telling your gay cousin, "You just haven't met the right girl yet.

[...] things most people do naturally are often inexplicably difficult for me.

Your initiations are worthwhile.