"When men hear women want a commitment, they think it means commitment to a romantic relationship, but that's not it. It's a commitment to not floating around anymore. I want a guy who is entrenched in his own life. Entrenched is awesome."

"I'm not good at anything except writing jokes. I wasn't good at sports, I wasn't good at anything artsy, ever. I think there was a real worry for a while about what I would be good at. I was just this chubby little Indian kid who looked like a nerd."

"My dad's whole family is in Madras and I was born in America so we didn't have that big Indian community. I don't really have anything interesting to say about it. When I talk about it people are like, 'meh, let's talk about something else.'"

"I have such a rich fantasy life, I can't help it. I do make up a lot of romantic stories in my head."

"The problem was to sustain at any cost the feeling you had in the theater that you were watching a real person, yes, but an intense condensation of his experience, not simply a realistic series of episodes."

"I worked in Licorice Pizza when John Lennon was killed. I had the day off, but I came in anyway because people needed a place to mourn."

"It's a little like casting out hundreds of fishing lines into the audience. You start getting little bites, then more, then you hook a few, then more. Then you can start reeling them in and that's a loveliest feeling - the whole audience laughing with you."

"Cinema is entertainment, and people go to the movies because they want to feel good and forget about everything."