Amy Poehler

Be yourself. No one else can be you.

[a metaphor for the end of her marriage] The process of divorce is about loading a blanket, throwing it up, watching it all spin, and worrying what stuff will break when it lands.

The streets and woods around my house were a perfect setting for fake mischief. I would spend all afternoon pretending I had run away and had to live on my own. I would bring Toll House cookies and a sweatshirt and try to make a fire. I would sneak out side my house at dusk with a pair binoculars and search the streets for murderers. I created scenarios in my head that I always managed to escape from kidnap fantasies where I would wriggle free from the ropes.

Sometimes Tina Fey is like a very talented bungee-jumping expert. All it takes Tina to softly say, ‘We can do this, right?’ and I suddenly feel like I can jump off a bridge.

Women talk about stuff on the way to the valet that it takes men 10 years to admit to each other. The depth at which women talk to and about each other is invaluable to me. With your really, really close good friends you do that fast.

You know, it sounds like I’m bragging in some way, but as far as career stuff, there’s not that much stuff that scares me. I know what I can do well.

I feel very blessed to have two wonderful, healthy children who keep me completely grounded, sane and throw up on my shoes just before I go to an awards show just so I know to keep it real.

Father was the eldest son and the heir apparent, and he set the standard for being a Rockefeller very high, so every achievement was taken for granted and perfection was the norm.

How do people make it through life without a sister?

It’s her first grandchild, so she’s really, really, really excited. I guess my mom is a little more stressed out than me.

When I’m happier and healthier, my family is happier and healthier, and it affects how I interact with my friends and the people I work with.

My mother’s a psychologist, my stepfather’s a psychologist, my stepmother is a therapist and my dad’s a lawyer. So it was all prominent in my life. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t know someone on some form of prescription medicine.

I was not a classic mother. But my kids were never palmed off to boarding school. So, I didn’t bake cookies. You can buy cookies, but you can’t buy love.

You leave home to seek your fortune and when you get it, you go home and share it with your family.

The debt of gratitude we owe our mother and father goes forward, not backward. What we owe our parents is the bill presented to us by our children.

Maybe that’s all that family really is, a group of people who all miss the same imaginary place.

I met with my lawyers. They gave me all the wrong advice. For a long time I refused to accept the child was mine. I should have met her, arranged a DNA test and accepted my responsibility.

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

As children we recognized that we belonged to an unusual, even exceptional, family, but the effect was different on each of us.

I have not been a good father, but no father has loved his children more. Like my father, I decided the best thing I could do for my kids was work and provide. Fortunately, I’ve been able to do that. Unfortunately, my work was on the road, and that’s meant a life of one-nighters.

The joy is still there when I see Sean. He didn’t come out of my belly, but my God, I’ve made his bones, because I’ve attended to every meal, and how he sleeps, and the fact that he swims like a fish because I took him to the ocean. I’m so proud of all his things. But he is my biggest pride.