Top 350 Amy Poehler Quotes (2026 Update)
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301. “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

302. “Let me offer this apology. Please excuse this self-indulgent preface. I know what I am doing. I am presenting a series of reasons as to why you should lower your expectations, so that you can be blown away by my sneaky insights about life and work. I am a grown woman. I know my own tricks!”

— Amy Poehler

303. “I was told I resembled a cartoon chicken, which is still true, especially after a rough weekend. My parents tell stories about my staring at them from the crib at all hours of the night. Sounds pretty creepy, right? A pale, bald and tiny baby bird peering out through the slats of its cage, challenging the adults to an all-night staring contest?”

— Amy Poehler

304. “I loved school. I loved new shoes and lunch boxes and sharp pencils. I would hold dance contests in tiny finished basements with my friends. I roller-skated in my driveway and walked home from the bus stop on my own. We never locked our door. I had a younger brother whom I loved and also liked. I thought my mother was the most beautiful mother in the world and my father was a superhero who would always protect me. I wish this feeling for every child on earth.”

— Amy Poehler

305. “I am here to tell you that you don’t have to. You don’t have to tell it or tweet it or Instagram it. You don’t have to put it in a book or share it with anyone who doesn’t feel safe and protective of your heart.”

— Amy Poehler

306. “I can party like a twenty-four-year-old but it takes me almost a week to recover.”

— Amy Poehler

307. “A war raged between my jokey and protective brain and my squishy and tender heart. 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. So let’s peek behind the curtain and hail the others like us. The open-faced sandwiches who take risks and live big and smile with all of their teeth. These are the people I want to be around. This is the honest way I want to live and love and write.”

— Amy Poehler

308. “While I was at Carlucci I learned how to dust a tiramisu and pair cordials. I learned having a pocket filled with cash is a dangerous thing. I learned that I was getting way too good at a job that was not my life’s passion.”

— Amy Poehler

309. “I haven’t lived a full enough life to look back on, but I am too old to get by on being pithy and cute. I know enough now to know I know nothing. I am slugging away every day, just like you.”

— Amy Poehler

310. “Also, even though I’m bossy, I like being told what to do by people who are smarter and more interesting than me.”

— Amy Poehler

311. “Wordsworth also said that the best part of a person’s life is “his little, nameless, unremembered, acts of kindness and of love.” I.”

— Amy Poehler

312. “Remember, your career is a bad boyfriend. It likes you when you don’t depend on it.”

— Amy Poehler

313. “The lessons? Women are mighty. George Clooney loves bits. Doing something is often more fun than doing it alone. And you don’t always have to win to get the pudding.”

— Amy Poehler

314. “I think middle age begins once you start looking forward to eating dinner before six thirty, or when you call the cops when your next-door neighbor has a party.”

— Amy Poehler

315. “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

316. “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

317. “I am introducing a new idea. Try to care less. Practice ambivalence. Learn to let go of wanting it.”

— Amy Poehler

318. “Gerthe also talked about travel. She talked about living in Jamaica. She joked about her husband and her haircut, because she is more than the earthquake. 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.”

— Amy Poehler

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

— Amy Poehler

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

— Amy Poehler

321. “Annie taught me that orphanages were a blast and being rich is the only thing that matters. Grease taught me being in a gang is nonstop fun and you need to dress sexier to have any chance of keeping a guy interested. But The Wizard of Oz was the ultimate. It dealt with friendship and fear and death and rainbows and sparkly red shoes.”

— Amy Poehler

322. “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

323. “Speaking of music, we will arrive with our own. We plan on delivering our baby to the soundtrack of Pink Floyd’s The Wall while simultaneously watching The Wizard of Oz. If this kid works with us, we guarantee your minds will be blown!”

— Amy Poehler

324. “He handed me a rope and it was up to me whether I would climb it or use it to hang myself.”

— Amy Poehler

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

— Amy Poehler

326. “A watched cervix never dilates.”

— Amy Poehler

327. “But I was eventually okay. And you will be okay too. Here’s why. I had already made a decision early on that I would be a plain girl with tons of personality, and accepting it made everything a lot easier.”

— Amy Poehler

328. “I wondered if I was just doing this as some kind of ego trip. Then I decided I didn’t care. Not enough is made of the fact that being of service makes you feel good. I think nonprofits should guarantee that giving your time and money makes your skin better and your ass smaller. Why not? There are so many people in the world with so little. Who cares why you decide to help?”

— Amy Poehler

329. “Style is obviously important in Haiti. A lot of people wore bright colors and neatly pressed shirts. The taxis and billboards were beautiful. Haiti is not afraid of color. And texture. And depth. The young people looked fierce and bored. They looked like pure energy. There was true aesthetic but also a palpable darkness. I mean, let’s get real. Kids are slaves here. Kids are bought and sold and put to work.”

— Amy Poehler

330. “You get better at understanding what people mean and how it can be different from what they say.”

— Amy Poehler

331. “Our parents surround us with origin stories that create deep grooves in the vinyl records of our lives.”

— Amy Poehler

332. “When you have a comfortable and loving middle-class family, sometimes you yearn for a dance on the edge. This can lead to an overactive imagination, but it is also the reason why kids in Montana do meth.”

— Amy Poehler

333. “All of my lower-middle-class Boston issues rose to the surface. I don’t like it when bratty, privileged old white guys speak to me like I am their mouthy niece. I got that amazing feeling you get when you know you are going to lose it in the best, most self-righteous way. I just leaned back and yelled, “FUUUUUUUUUUUUCK YOU.” Then I chased him as he tried to get away from me.”

— Amy Poehler

334. “Patti Smith was amazing. She talked about politics and sang like a soldier. She was so cool and interesting. She stomped around and spit onstage. Spitting is disgusting, but when Patti spits it looks like ballet.”

— Amy Poehler

335. “Sometimes I worry that not enough people hate me.”

— Amy Poehler

336. “I think it’s glorious to be nervous. Being nervous is great! How often do we get nervous on a daily basis? Being slightly nervous means you care, and you’re alive, and you’re taking some kind of risk. Hooray for being nervous! A friend told me to substitute the word ‘excitement’ for ‘nervous’. That way you acknowledge the physical feelings without putting a negative spin on things. So to answer your question, sometimes I still get so excited about ‘Update’ that I want to throw up.”

— Amy Poehler

337. “People treat writing like it’s some elegant act but it’s usually lonely and isolating.”

— Amy Poehler

338. “Career is different. Career is the stringing together of opportunities and jobs. Mix in public opinion and past regrets. Add a dash of future panic and a whole lot of financial uncertainty.”

— Amy Poehler

339. “Sometimes this book stays in the present, other times I try to cut myself in half and count the rings. Occasionally I think about the future, but I try to do that sparingly because it usually makes me anxious.”

— Amy Poehler

340. “It’s a struggle for me to remain open,” she admits. “To not shut down because I’m defensive or scared or maybe my ego is getting in the way. And the other side of that is just believing that I belong where I am and deserve to take up space. I fight constantly between those two things, between not apologizing for what I want and staying vulnerable and creatively supple and not thinking I know better than everyone else.”

— Amy Poehler

341. “I don’t miss the frustration of youth, the anticipation of love and pain, the paralysis of choices still ahead. The pressure of “What are you going to do?” makes everybody feel like they haven’t done anything yet. Young people can remind us to take chances and be angry and stop our patterns. Old people can remind us to laugh more and get focused and make friends with our patterns. Young and old need to relax in the moment and live where they are.”

— Amy Poehler

342. “The best way I can explain a panic attack is that it’s the feeling of someone inside my body stacking it with books. The books continue to pile up and they make me feel like I can’t breathe.”

— Amy Poehler

343. “The eighties were a strange time for teenage fashion. We wore silk blouses and shoulder pads, neon earrings and jodhpur pants. Come to think of it, our pants were especially weird. We also wore stirrup pants, parachute pants, and velvet knickers. It was a real experimental pant time.”

— Amy Poehler

344. “Now on to politics. What’s the deal, guys? Seriously. I mean, come on. Get it together. It’s like, when are we going to wake up? It’s all crazy. Who’s with me. Thanks for letting me get that off my chest.”

— Amy Poehler

345. “You are all so good and I wish I were better. Now get out of here because I want to be where you are.”

— Amy Poehler

346. “Apologies have nothing to do with you. They are balloons in the sky. They may never land. They may even choke a bird.”

— Amy Poehler

347. “Now everything is backed up on the cloud and you can find your phone if you lose it in a taxi. Don’t you realize it’s only a matter of time before our phones can FIND US?”

— Amy Poehler

348. “Now I just want to sit down and have someone perform my five favorite songs while I eat a light dinner and receive a simultaneous pedicure.”

— Amy Poehler

349. “And then you just do it. You just dig in and write it.”

— Amy Poehler

350. “Teenage bodies should be filled with Vonnegut and meatball subs, not opiates that create glassy-eyed party monsters.”

— Amy Poehler