Amy Poehler

I just love bossy women. I could be around them all day. To me, bossy is not a pejorative term at all. It means someone's passionate and engaged and ambitious and doesn't mind leading.

There is an unspoken pact that women are supposed to follow. I am supposed to act like I constantly feel guilty about being away from my kids. (I don't. I love my job.) Mothers who stay at home are supposed to pretend they are bored and wish they were doing more corporate things. (They don't. They love their job.) If we all stick to the plan there will be less blood in the streets.

I swear, if I could eat my children, I would. I'd consume them like some beast in a Hieronymus Bosch painting, but in a friendlier, more momlike way. Their little bodies make me salivate. It takes everything I have not to swallow them whole.

When your children arrive, the best you can hope for is that they break open everything about you. Your mind floods with oxygen. Your heart becomes a room with wide-open windows. You laugh hard every day. You think about the future and read about global warming. You realize how nice it feels to care about someone else more than yourself. And gradually, through this heart-heavy openness and these fresh eyes, you start to see the world a little more. Maybe you start to care a teeny tiny bit more about what happens to everyone in it.

Dating in highschool was very different. Boys suddenly went up your shirt, girls were expected to give blow jobs and be sexy. You had to be hot, but not a slut. You had to be into sex, but never have it. Except when your boyfriend wanted it. If you had sex you had to keep it a secret, but also be very good at it. Except not too good, because this better be your first time.

Your career and your passion don't always match up.

If you are lucky, there is a moment in your life when you have some say as to what your currency is going to be. I decided early on it was not going to be my looks.

It__ very hard to have ideas. It__ very hard to put yourself out there, it__ very hard to be vulnerable, but those people who do that are the dreamers, the thinkers and the creators. They are the magic people of the world.

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.

I want to be around people that do things. I don__ want to be around people anymore that judge or talk about what people do. I want to be around people that dream and support and do things.

You will never climb Career Mountain and get to the top and shout, __ made it!_ You will rarely feel done or complete or even successful. Most people I know struggle with that complicated soup of feeling slighted on one hand and like a total fraud on the other. Our ego is a monster that loves to sit at the head of the table, and I have learned that my ego is just as rude and loud and hungry as everyone else__. It doesn__ matter how much you get; you are left wanting more. Success is filled with MSG.

It__ never overreacting to ask for what you want and need.

When I had a job catering, I catered a wedding for the Smashing Pumpkins bassist in Indiana. And I served Billy Corgan shrimp off a tray.

There's something so romantic about being broke in New York. You gotta do it. You have to live there once without any money, and then you have to live there when you have money. Let me tell you, of the two, the latter is far better.

I worked at an ice cream parlor called Chadwicks. We wore old-timey outfits and had to bang a drum, play a kazoo, and sing 'Happy Birthday' to people while giving them free birthday sundaes. Lots of ice cream scooping and $1 tips.

I cannot stress enough that the answer to life's questions is often in people's faces. Try putting your iPhones down once in a while, and look in people's faces. People's faces will tell you amazing things. Like if they are angry, or nauseous or asleep.

When you're a stay-at-home mother you have to pretend it's really boring, but it's not. It's enriching and fulfilling, and an amazing experience. And then when you're a working mother you have to pretend that you feel guilty all day long.

As you navigate through the rest of your life, be open to collaboration. Other people and other people's ideas are often better than your own. Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you, spend a lot of time with them, and it will change your life.