Top 350 Amy Poehler Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “Say no to an opportunity that may be slightly out of our comfort zone? Quiet our voice because we are worried it is not perfect? I believe great people do things before they are ready. This is America and I am allowed to have healthy self-esteem.”

— Amy Poehler

252. “Gavin de Becker talks about this in his wonderful book The Gift Of Fear. He talks about how the word “no” should be the “end of discussion, not the beginning of a negotiation”.”

— Amy Poehler

253. “Depending on your career is like eating cake for breakfast and wondering why you start crying an hour later.”

— Amy Poehler

254. “I will say it again. Ambivalence is key. 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.”

— Amy Poehler

255. “I’m a moon junky. Every time I look at the moon I feel less alone and less afraid. I tell my boys that moonlight is a magic blanket and the stars above are campfires set by friendly aliens.”

— Amy Poehler

256. “Maya Angelou said, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” I’m proud that Mike Schur and I rejected the idea that creativity needs to come from chaos. I like how we ran our writers’ room and our set. People had a great time when they came to work on our show and that mattered to us. I like to think the spirit we had on set found its way onto the show.”

— Amy Poehler

257. “Pretending to not want something can work. Really not caring if you get it takes a lifetime of practice.”

— Amy Poehler

258. “Some people give their demon so much room that there is no space in their head or bed for love. They feed their demon and it gets really strong and then it makes them stay in abusive relationships or starve their beautiful bodies. But sometimes, you get a little older and get a little bored of the demon. Through good therapy and friends and self-love you can practice treating the demon like a hacky, annoying cousin.”

— Amy Poehler

259. “MTV introduced me to punk music and gay people.”

— Amy Poehler

260. “Bedtime is fraught with fear and disappointment. When it is just me alone with my restless body and mind, I feel like the whole world is asleep and gone. It’s very lonely. I am tired of being tired and talking about how tired I am.”

— Amy Poehler

261. “I plan on lying to my children about most of my drug use. I had a friend who told her adolescent son he was allergic to pot, and if he tried it he would break out into hives. This lasted for a while until one of his friends gently suggested maybe she had made that fact up. His whole world was blown. He came to her asking, “Did you make that up? How could you?” and she said, “Of course I did. Let me make you a BLT.” I think this is a terrific idea. I think we don’t lie to our children enough.”

— Amy Poehler

262. “I was trapped in an awful spiral of insecure narcissism.”

— Amy Poehler

263. “I am allowed to have healthy self-esteem.”

— Amy Poehler

264. “Acting lets you escape the real world and make out with people you are not married to. It lets you live in the skin of another person and run away from the person you actually are.”

— Amy Poehler

265. “It doesn’t mean I am afraid of conflict or don’t know how to stand up for myself. I am getting to a place right in the middle where I feel good about exactly how much I apologize. It takes years as a woman to unlearn what you have been taught to be sorry for. It takes years to find your voice and seize your real estate.”

— Amy Poehler

266. “We all have a tiny whispery voice inside of us, but the bad ones are usually at a lower register and come through a little clearer.”

— Amy Poehler

267. “I firmly believe that every boy needs his mom to love him and every girl needs her dad to pay attention to her.”

— Amy Poehler

268. “People are their most beautiful when they are laughing, crying, dancing, playing, telling the truth, and being chased in a fun way.”

— Amy Poehler

269. “Some people give their demon so much room that there is no space in their head or bed for love.”

— Amy Poehler

270. “Dancing is the great equalizer. It gets people out of their heads and into their bodies.”

— Amy Poehler

271. “It is no longer unusual for people who choose surrogacy, gay adoption, IVF, international and domestic adoption, fostering, and childlessness to live side by side and quietly judge each other. We can all live in peace thinking our way is the best way and everything else is cuckoo.”

— Amy Poehler

272. “I love Boston, but we sound like idiots.”

— Amy Poehler

273. “I have realized that mystery is what keeps people away, and I’ve grown tired of smoke and mirrors. I yearn for the clean, well-lighted place.”

— Amy Poehler

274. “I recently hurt myself on a treadmill and it wasn’t even on. I was adjusting my speed and stepped wrong and twisted my ankle. I felt a moment of frustration filled with immediate relief. I didn’t have to actually work out, but I still got credit for trying. It was a gym snow day.”

— Amy Poehler

275. “I didn’t really know who I was, but improv had taught me that I could be anyone. I didn’t have to wait to be cast – I could give myself the part. I could be an old man or a teenage babysitter or a rodeo clown. In three short years Chicago had taught me that I could decide who I was. My only job was to surround myself with people who respected and supported that choice. Being foolish was the smartest thing to do.”

— Amy Poehler

276. “It’s just that sometimes anger should just stay anger and tears can change anger to something else. However, if you do start crying in an argument and someone asks why, you can always say, “I’m just crying because of how wrong you are.”

— Amy Poehler

277. “Career is the thing that will not fill you up and never make you truly whole. Depending on your career is like eating cake for breakfast and wondering why you start crying an hour later.”

— Amy Poehler

278. “When I yell at the dads drinking coffee and looking at their phones at the playground while their seven-year-olds play on the preschool monkey bars, I feel like I am fully alive.”

— Amy Poehler

279. “People who are committing and taking risks become the king and queen of my prom.”

— Amy Poehler

280. “Anyway, this other nurse and I used to jump around in our underwear and kiss each other for fun. Oh wait, what I meant to say was that I answered phones and filed things.”

— Amy Poehler

281. “It also reminds you of the simple truths that we purposely forget every day or else we would never get out of bed. Things like, nothing lasts forever and relationships can end. The best that can happen is you learn a little more about what you can handle and you stay soft through the pain. Perhaps you feel a little wiser. Maybe your experience can be of help to others.”

— Amy Poehler

282. “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. Melissa and Wendy and Jane and I joked about the Golden Globes and gave each other fake awards. I gave Melissa “Best Person in Charge.” She gave me “Most Famous and Most Normal.” This meant and means a great deal.”

— Amy Poehler

283. “Every mother needs a wife. Some mothers’ wives are their mothers. Some mothers’ wives are their husbands. Some mothers’ wives are their friends and neighbors. Every working person needs someone to come home to and someone to come get them out of the home. Someone who asks questions about their day and maybe fixes them something to eat.”

— Amy Poehler

284. “The more I time-travel the more I learn I am always just where I need to be.”

— Amy Poehler

285. “Feeling invisible means you can float. You can decide to travel without permission.”

— Amy Poehler

286. “I am a tea girl. Coffee smells so good but my stomach doesn’t like it.”

— Amy Poehler

287. “I don’t like it when bratty, privileged old white guys speak to me like I am their mouthy niece.”

— Amy Poehler

288. “I wonder if this love will crack open my chest and split me in half. It’s scary, this love.”

— Amy Poehler

289. “Back then there was this wonderful thing called “twilight sleep” where women were given anesthesia at the onset of labor and woke up with a baby. Today “twilight sleep” is when you pass out on your bed while looking at paparazzi photos of Robert Pattinson eating an omelet.”

— Amy Poehler

290. “Even demons gotta sleep.”

— Amy Poehler

291. “You could just watch your belly grow bigger and no one would be allowed to ask you about it and you would have your baby and a year later you would allow visitors to finally come and meet your little miracle.”

— Amy Poehler

292. “Everyone lies about writing. They lie about how easy it is or how hard it was. They perpetuate a romantic idea that writing is some beautiful experience that takes place in an architectural room filled with leather novels and chai tea.”

— Amy Poehler

293. “The biggest lie and biggest crime is that we all do this alone and look down on people who don’t. Can’t we all agree that more eyes on a kid is ultimately better?”

— Amy Poehler

294. “I do a weird thing when I am nervous where I tilt my head back like I am super confident. This is my attempt to fake it until I make it, or at the very least make it easier for someone to slit my throat.”

— Amy Poehler

295. “Bernie Mac was the sweetest and kindest.”

— Amy Poehler

296. “Stop whining about getting old. It’s a privilege.”

— Amy Poehler

297. “The sleep deprivation after children is so real. I liken it to what it must feel like to walk on the moon and to cry the whole time because you had heard that the moon was supposed to be great but in truth it totally sucks.”

— Amy Poehler

298. “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.”

— Amy Poehler

299. “Apologies have nothing to do with you. They are balloons in the sky.”

— Amy Poehler

300. “A watched cervix never dilates.”

— Amy Poehler