Tina Fey

Because every person, no matter who you are-how tall you are, how short you are-some things work on you and some things don’t. I don’t like to wear things that feel like costumes. Whenever I work with a stylist, I always find myself saying the same thing: ‘I want my dress to say, I’m just here from New York.’ That’s why I always end up in black or brown. If I try to wear too much color, I feel like I’m pretending to be from Los Angeles and I’m not getting away with it.

I was looking at Jane Fonda last night. And you know why she always looks great? Because there was never a point where you say, ‘Hey, remember those two years when Fonda got fat?’ It never happened. You just have to keep that baseline. That goddamn baseline.

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

Do your thing and don’t care if they don’t like it.

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 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.

Let’s start with the church. As you know, it’s my background, it’s a natural setting for me and it’s definitely my roots.

I think the Grammy is like the award, you know.

I only mentioned people in Barbie Dreams that I f**k wit. This isn’t a diss. Yikes. This is culture, this is BIGGIE!!!!! New York!!!! This is FUN. Light hearted fun.

There’s not a lot of towns that I can go to and take family – too many incongruous knocks on doors – “Hello, honey. Have you missed me?”

You feel quite distant by playing at huge stadiums year after year, where you only can see a great darkness in front of you

Lots of people who complained about us receiving the MBE received theirs for heroism in the war –for killing people. We received ours for entertaining other people. I’d say we deserve ours more.

I love Led Zeppelin, they were four prodigiously talented musicians. The magical combination of Jimmy Page and Robert Plant underpinned by the best rhythm section, John Paul Jones on bass and the best rock n’roll drummer in the world, John Bonham.

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.

Cats know, comin’ out of four, they better be standin’ on it, else they’ll be standin’ in it.

[On Lou Adler] Lou really had a production deal called a label, whereas we had a real label. We had a great many artists, whereas he had very few. Lou also produced most of the stuff that came out on Ode. We were not producers.

Many people worry so much about managing their careers, but rarely spend half that much energy managing their lives. I want to make my life, not just my job, the best it can be. The rest will work itself out.

Whitney Houston’s cover of “I Will Always Love You” was constantly on my FM Walkman radio around that time. I think that made me cry because I associated it with absolutely no one.

There were a couple of times where you think you’re swimming towards a guy with a breating apparatus and then you find its just some thing in the water and you’re like (imitates freaking out) and then you just know what to do and they film your stupid face just screaming underwater and then everyone starts laughing and its just like, ahh, great.

I needed to explore my talent and versatility and see if I had another side to me, another sound.

Anything where we’re the butt of the joke, no one tells us about it.