Amy Poehler Quotations | Page 3

I want to be around people that do things. I don't want to be around people anymore that judge or talk about what people do. I want to be around people who dream and support and do things.

We [with Les Charles] started talking about hotel stories, and we found that a lot of the action was happening in the hotel bar. We actually thought of that while we were in a bar: "Why would anyone ever leave here?"

Don't treat your heart like an action figure wrapped in plastic and never used.

When you do talk about yourself, or to yourself... try to picture you talking to your own daughter, or your younger sister. Because you would tell your younger sister or your daughter that she is beautiful, and you wouldn't be lying. Because she is. And so are you.

Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you, spend a lot of time with them, and it will change your life.

I hope and assume that every good comedy writer, no matter the age, has a moment where they discover how great Cheers is.

My idea of the perfect exercise class is this: The teacher gives us all a hug and goes, 'You did it! You showed up! Let’s lie down.' We all lie down and she’s like, 'How is everybody feeling?' We’re like, 'Great!' And the teacher’s like, 'Great!' Then we all get to leave 20 minutes early.

Hey, guess what? Turns out the free market? Not so free. Wall Street was hit hard Monday when Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, Merrill Lynch was sold to Bank of America, and insurance giant AIG neared a collapse of its own. Basically, if your commercials air during golf tournaments, you're done.

Being snubbed is not always a bad thing at awards shows because you end up getting a lot of people coming up to you and telling you how great you are.

Sleep is out... tired is the new black.

When you host a show you have to hopefully be funny at the top and set the tone for a really fun evening.

The truth is, writing is this: hard and boring and occasionally great but usually not.

To some people, not caring is supposed to be cool, commenting is more interesting than doing, and everything is judged and then disposed of in, like, five minutes. I'm not interested in those kinds of people. I like the person who commits and goes all in and takes big swings and then maybe fails or looks stupid; who jumps and falls down, rather than the person who points at the person who fell, and laughs. But I do sometimes laugh when people fall down.

Treat your career like a bad boyfriend... Your career wont take care of you. It won't call you back or introduce you to its parents. Your career will openly flirt with other people while you are around... You have to care about your work, but not about the result. You have to care about how good you are and how good you feel, but not about how good people think you are or how good people think you look.

Anybody who doesn't make you feel good, kick them to the curb. And the earlier you start in your life, the better.

The only way we will survive is by being kind. The only way we can get by in this world is through the help we receive from others. No one can do it alone, no matter how great the machines are.

If you can surf your life rather than plant your feet, you will be happier.

Sometimes you need to know to quit while you're ahead or at least before things get much worse!

I had no idea how to get guys to notice me. I still don't. Who cares?

You have to be where you are to get where you need to go.

I think we should stop asking people in their twenties what they 'want to do' and start asking them what they don't want to do.

I get a bit nervous because I just want the show to go well. I think you always have to be a little bit nervous, or else you're a little checked-out, and that's maybe the time when you're not doing your best stuff, because you're kind of just checked-out and falling back on stuff.

When in doubt, make funny faces.

Any time you talk to anyone about something that they love, they're, like, their most beautiful. It's a cool gift to get to talk to people about what they love.

Women need to take charge of their lives and be as dynamic and active as they can be. I know that some people feel that there's a negative connotation to the notion of feminism like it has some hidden and ugly undercurrent. But that's ridiculous. My mother was a feminist and she was very politically-minded and always anxious to defend women's rights and advance a lot of social issues for women.

Masters of Sex is the degree I got from Boston College.

I want to be around people who dream and support and do things.

Other people are not medicine.

I just want to help other women achieve as much as they can in society without restraints being imposed on us. It's the most natural and normal thing to want to defend your rights to equal opportunities, equal pay for equal work, and everything that comes with that.

No one looks stupid when they're having fun.

It seems a strange thing, but once I was able to get past that kind of self-image problem, I was able to open up in my comedy work and just go all out, take chances, and have fun with the performance aspect of that.

A person's tragedy does not make up their entire life. A story carves deep grooves into our brains each time we tell it. But we aren't one story. We can change our stories. We can write our own.

The minute anyone makes you feel weird and non-included or not supported, you know, either beat it or tell them to beat it.

Be easy on yourself. Have fun. Only hang around people that are positive and make you feel good. Anybody who doesn't make you feel good, kick them to the curb. And the earlier you start in your life the better. The minute anybody makes you feel weird and non-included or not supported, you know, either beat it or tell them to beat it.

It takes years as a woman to unlearn what you have been taught to be sorry for.

It’s never overreacting to ask for what you want and need.

I am interested in people who swim in the deep end. I want to have conversations about real things with people who have experienced real things. I'm tired of talking about movies and gossiping about friends. Life is crunchy and complicated and all the more delicious.

I really liked the idea of playing that kind of optimistic, super-intense, go-get-'em spirit combined with being a little bit of an outsider. I am really drawn to girls of that age in general, who believe they can be a waitress, scientist, actress, a dentist, a zookeeper...and who really aren't boy-crazy.

It's nice to be short, because people expect less from you.

Anyone who has the kind of inventive and inspired comic sensibility to be able to do that kind of work must be pretty talented.

Always remember your kid's name,

Education is power, it changes your whole life, it can create a life for yourself. So the more educated you are, the more you learn about what you care about, you become a more caring person. And if you can speak about what you care about to a person you disagree with, without denigrating or insulting them, then you may actually be heard. And you may even change their mind, or they may change yours.

I had to come to terms with how I saw myself. I had to understand that I wasn't pretty or beautiful like most actresses and that I shouldn't care about whether other people found me attractive or not.

I love my boys so much I fear my heart will explode. I wonder if this love will crack open my chest and split me in half. It is scary, this love.

Sleep can completely change your entire outlook on life. One good night's sleep can help you realize that you shouldn't break up with someone, or you are being too hard on your friend, or you actually will win the race or the game or get the job. Sleep helps you win at life.

I think we should stop asking people in their 20s what they 'want to do' and start asking them what they don't want to do. Instead of asking students to 'declare their major' we should ask students to 'list what they will do anything to avoid.' It just makes a lot more sense.

Talented men are not threatened by talented women. They welcome them. And same way with real men.

Nobody looks stupid when they are having fun.

The creation of the UCB Theatre is by far my proudest professional accomplishment.

An interesting thing about the beginning of our friendship and professional collaboration [with Tina Fey] was that the improve scenes we would do together were basically dramatic and not funny at all.

The great thing about taking big chances when you're younger is you have less to lose, and you don't know as much. So you take big swings.

Just breathe. Sometimes you're only a few breaths away from feeling better.

Opening your heart and being courageous and telling people that you care about them or like them or that you think they're special only makes you a better, bigger, kinder, softer, more loving person, and only attracts more love into your life.

We have to agree beforehand to divide the funniest lines between us. But Tina [Fey] is so brilliant that I just love every moment working with her and also just hanging out together as friends.

People who read are people who dream, and we connect through the stories we live and tell and read.

I don’t really believe in cars, but I drive one every day and I love that it gets me places and makes life so much easier and faster and I don’t know what I would do without it.

Try putting your iPhones down every once in a while and look at people's faces.

Open-faced sandwiches take risks and live big and smile with all their teeth. These are the people I want to be around.

Creativity is connected to your passion, that light inside you that drives you. That joy that comes when you do something you love. That small voice that tells you, 'I like this. Do this again. You are good at it. Keep going.' That is the juicy stuff that lubricates our lives and helps us feel less alone in the world.

Rooting for other people's failure does get in the way of your success.

I grew up watching skating all the time in the Olympic stuff.

Watching great people do what you love is a good way to start learning how to do it yourself.

When young girls are encouraged to explore what they find interesting, they grow up to be interesting women.

We don't want to be afraid to make a choice because we're afraid to make a mistake because most decisions aren't final. Feelings change all the time. You can always change your mind and taking risks and making choices is what makes life so exciting because we never know what's going to happen. Every day something new comes our way.

I like to do things that challenge me and make me nervous.

You become more attractive when you love yourself. You attract the right things when you have a sense of who you are.

You aren't allowed to feel special, but no one knows the specific ways you are in pain.

There's only, like, five perfectly symmetrical people in the world, and they're all movie stars, and they should be, because their faces are very pleasing to look at, but the rest of us are just a jangle of stuff, and the earlier you learn that you should focus on what you have and not obsess about what you don't have, the happier you will be.

Everything looked like you could run around in it you could catch a bus!

There's a couple of enemies to improv, and one of them is editing; when you edit on TV it makes it seem like it's not really improv.

I used to get my hair dyed at a place called Big Hair. It cost $15. They just used straight bleach, so my hair was the color of white lined paper, and my eyebrows looked like they were done with a thick black marker.

I.O. was kind of like comedy high school. Everybody knows each other, dated each other, performed together, lived together - so there's a lot of history among a lot of people.

You tell somebody you're an improviser and they think you're doing Random Acts of Comedy and it's just like, a bastardization of what I think is the purest form of art. People still don't get it, they still don't understand that...well, number one, it's hard to prove to people that you're improvising when you're on TV. They don't believe it.

We want to extend our adolescence as long as we can,

We want to extend our adolescence as long as we can. I.O., Upright Citizens Brigade and 'SNL' have enabled me to do that.