The Quotables Blog

We’re huge fans of the wonderfully-quotable Tina Fey, queen of American comedy, here at Quotables HQ. From Saturday Night Live, to Mean Girls, to 30 Rock, and not forgetting her infamous Sarah Palin impressions, Tina Fey is a pioneer of smart, side-splitting quips and slyly hilarious zingers, she’s the sexy, funny everywoman who is almost indecently talented. We love her rather a lot.

To celebrate the launch of Tina’s first book – the memoir/essay collection Bossypants, we’ve put together our Top 20 Tina Fey Quotables, including a choice few from her new book. And for all your 30 Rock fans, look out for our Top 20 Liz Lemon quotes next week! Click on each quote to love it on Quotables, or share on Twitter or Facebook – and let us know in the comments if we’ve missed any of your favourites!

Click here to buy Bossypants on Amazon.

1. I never dreamed I would receive the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, mostly because my style is so typically Austrian.

2.Ladies gotta say no to their husbands at the movies. They gotta say: “No, we are watching back-to-back cancer movies. And then this movie about a cat.”

3. I know older men in comedy who can barely feed and clean themselves, and they still work. The women, though, they’re all ‘crazy.’ I have a suspicion — and hear me out, because this is a rough one — that the definition of ‘crazy’ in show business is a woman who keeps talking even after no one wants to f*ck her anymore.

4. How do you juggle it all?’ people constantly ask me, with an accusatory look in their eyes. ‘You’re screwing it all up, aren’t you?’ their eyes say. My standard answer is that I have the same struggle as any working parent but with the good fortune to be working at my dream job. Or sometimes I just hand them a juicy red apple I’ve poisoned in my working-mother witch cauldron and fly away.

5. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I am all about money. I mean, just look how well my line of zodiac-inspired toe rings and homeopathic children’s medications are selling on Home Shopping Network.

6. [On what to expect from her Oscar dress] I only know that this dress will have to be ‘fancier’ than a Golden Globes dress, but I wouldn’t hold your breath to see me in a four-foot ruffled train with an origami-inspired front. Whatever it is, it will be see-through, because that is my trademark.

7. I had to get back to work. NBC has me under contract. The baby and I only have a verbal agreement.

8. At the request of the Catholic Church, a three-day sex orgy to be held near Rio de Janeiro was cancelled last Friday. So instead I spent the weekend cleaning my apartment.

9. Researchers reported that they developed a “self-healing” plastic that repairs itself if cracked. The plastic will change the way airplanes are built and medicine is practiced. In a related story, Joan Rivers will never die.

10. Don’t be too precious or attached to anything you write. Let things be malleable. For sketch writers, remember they’re called sketches for a reason. They’re not called oil paintings. Some of them are going to stink. You have to let them stink.

11. Twitter seems like a busman’s holiday: just more writing. I have no plans to do it. I’ll just stick with my 24/7 webcam. I’m old-fashioned that way.

12. There are a couple of things I want to impart to ladies who want to be in comedy: One, you don’t have to be weird or be quirky to get your job done. And two, comedy skill is not sexually transmittable. You do not have to sleep with a comedian to learn what you’re doing. Male comedians will not like that advice, but it is the truth.

13. The part of Jack Donaghy was written for Alec Baldwin. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the courage to introduce myself to him and tell him that at the time, so for several months I met with some of the best actors in New York…it just became clearer and clearer that this part was for no-one except Alec Baldwin. And so I knew what I had to do: I got pregnant and I stalled for a year.

14. I really love cursing a lot. But as I get older, I realize it’s a little unseemly for women of a certain age. But then once you pass sixty-five, you can hit it full tilt again and it’s charming. Once you’re Lauren Bacall’s age, you can be like, “What the f*ck.”

15. I’m not a mean person, but I have a capacity for it. I have the biting comment formed somewhere in the back of my head — like it’s in captivity. Sometimes people expect that I’m going to be tough. It’s not a bad situation. People treat you better. People are on time.

16. Amy Poehler and I have been friends for so long, we’re like Oprah and Gale. Only we’re not denying anything.

17. Tina Fey: Maybe what bothers me the most is that people say that Hillary is a bitch. Let me say something about that: Yeah, she is. And so am I and so is this one. (pointing to Amy Poehler)

Amy Poehler: Yeah, deal with it.

Tina Fey: Know what? Bitches get stuff done.

18. May she play the Drums to the fiery rhythm of her Own Heart with the sinewy strength of her Own Arms, so she need Not Lie With Drummers. [from 'A Mother's Prayer for Her Child']

19. I regularly ate health food cookies so disgusting that when I enthusiastically gave one to Rachel Dratch, she drew a picture of a rabbit and broke the cookie into a trail of tiny pieces coming out of the rabbit’s butt.

20. I like to crack the jokes now and again, but it’s only because I struggle with math.

Last night, President Barack Obama presented his 2011 State of the Union Address to the United States Congress.

The annual speech is designed for the President to report on the condition on the nation and what is on the political agenda, including national priorities, for the coming year.

Quotables has compiled a selection of some of the most important quotes from the address – Obama’s third as President.

From the earliest days of our founding, America has been the story of ordinary people who dare to dream. That’s how we win the future.

— Barack Obama

Starting this year, no American will be forbidden from serving the country they love because of who they love. And with that change, I call on all of our college campuses to open their doors to our military recruiters and the ROTC. It is time to leave behind the divisive battles of the past. It is time to move forward as one nation.

— Barack Obama

We will move forward together, or not at all – for the challenges we face are bigger than party, and bigger than politics.

— Barack Obama

Amid all the noise and passions and rancor of our public debate, Tucson reminded us that no matter who we are or where we come from, each of us is a part of something greater – something more consequential than party or political preference.

— Barack Obama

What comes of this moment will be determined not by whether we can sit together tonight, but whether we can work together tomorrow.

— Barack Obama

So, no, I will not give up on trying to change the tone of our politics.  I know it’s an election year.  And after last week, it’s clear that campaign fever has come even earlier than usual.  But we still need to govern.

— Barack Obama

We need to teach our kids that it’s not just the winner of the Super Bowl who deserves to be celebrated, but the winner of the science fair.

— Barack Obama

We recommend this BBC article for a break-down of events.

Featured image from climaticoanalysis.org.

Day-to-day adult supervision no longer needed!

— Eric Schmidt

Eric Schmidt, Google’s Chief Executive Officer, announced Friday that he is stepping down from his post with the above message today via Twitter. (Read his full statement here.) Meanwhile, the internet laments the end of his most quotable foot-in-mouth moments.

While rumours spread that he may be taking over from Steve Jobs as CEO of Apple, we compiled the Top 10 Eric Schmidt Quotes. Despite his retractable remarks, his quotes on the future of technology in the internet age are brilliant and insightful.

And who knows? He might even be a future nominee for the Foot in Mouth award from the Plain English Campaign!

Top 10 Eric Schmidt Quotes

If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.
— Eric Schmidt

We don’t need you to type at all. We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about.
— Eric Schmidt

One day we had a conversation where we figured we could just try to predict the stock market. And then we decided it was illegal. So we stopped doing that.
— Eric Schmidt

Just remember when you post something, the computers remember forever.
— Eric Schmidt

Most people don’t want Google to answer their questions […] They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next.
— Eric Schmidt

The Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn’t understand, the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had.
— Eric Schmidt

What we’re really doing is building an augmented version of humanity
— Eric Schmidt

I believe that this notion of self-publishing, which is what Blogger and blogging are really about, is the next big wave of human communication. The last big wave was Web activity. Before that one it was e-mail. Instant messaging was an extension of e-mail, real-time e-mail.
— Eric Schmidt