Amy Poehler

I just love bossy women. To me, bossy is not a pejorative term at all. It mans somebody’s passionate and engaged and ambitious and doesn’t mind leading.

Always remember your kid’s name. Always remember where you put your kid. Don’t let your kid drive until their feet can reach the pedals. Use the right size diapers … for yourself. And, when in doubt, make funny faces.

I think I always feel like if everything went to shit, I would just teach improv at a theatre.

I did not breeze in there thinking: ‘I’m going to nail this.’ My heart rate was not low when I was doing the Golden Globes. I wanted to do well. It’s very bizarre to be in a room where everybody in your audience is famous. But also: it’s an awards show!

[at the 2013 Golden Globe Awards] Meryl Streep is not here tonight. She has the flu and I hear she’s amazing in it.

[on Tina Fey] I like to say our relationship is as old as Lourdes Ciccone

We’re all mad here.

As a kid, I was making a building with blocks in our playroom. I didn’t have enough. So I asked my younger brother Robert if I could borrow some of his. He said, ‘Okay, but you have to give them back when you’re done.’ I used all of my blocks, then all of his blocks, and when I was done I had a great building, which I then glued together. Robert never did get those blocks back.

[Postpartum depression] is something that’s completely uncontrollable. It’s really painful and it’s really scary and women need a lot of support.

The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it.

Youth is such a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.

And let’s be clear: It’s not enough just to limit ads for foods that aren’t healthy. It’s also going to be critical to increase marketing for foods that are healthy.

It is the bliss of childhood that we are being warped most when we know it the least.

Of all the needs (there are none imaginary) a lonely child has, the one that must be satisfied, if there is going to be hope and a hope of wholeness, is the unshaken need for an unshakable God.

I was shy when I was a kid, I was very shy, but now I think I’ve improved a lot. I can speak OK with the media and with the people. My English is still bad but I feel a little bit better now than before.

When I was a little girl, I remember carrying my orange UNICEF carton with me as I went Trick-or-Treating.

The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.

The problem is when that fun stuff becomes the habit. And I think that’s what’s happened in our culture. Fast food has become the everyday meal.

The idea of kids helping other kids is such a great way to introduce children to being involved in charitable causes and volunteer work, setting them on the path to doing good for others throughout their lives.

Cotton was a force of nature. There’s a poetry to it, hoeing and growing cotton.

Back when we was in school in Mississippi, we had Little Black Sambo. That’s what you learned: Anytime something was not good, or anytime something was bad in some kinda way, it had to be called black. Like, you had Black Monday, Black Friday, black sheep… Of course, everything else, all the good stuff, is white. White Christmas and such.