Kay Cannon

“On '30 Rock,' the hours were really intense, and I was often on set. I'm glad I didn't have a kid then because I don't think I would have ever seen her. I would work 15-hour days, and weekends, too.”

“I was working at 'New Girl' when I found out there was going to be a 'Pitch' sequel.”

“I took a class at The Second City, and it became contagious.”

“When I finished grad school, I moved to Chicago proper, and I was at all the different improv schools, taking classes or interning.”

“I started writing for myself because I know how to write for myself. I know how to show what I can do.”

“I started writing when I was trying to be an actor, and I happened to be friends with Tina Fey, who happened to have her show '30 Rock' coming out. So Tina, who happens to be a mentor to me, gave me my slot and hired me.”

“People try to make women a very specific thing so that we like them.”

“There's still only maybe three female writers or two female writers to 10 guys in any kind of writer's room.”

“When I was younger, I wanted my hair to look like Molly Ringwald's.”

“I would be writing while I was breastfeeding. I didn't want the computer to be too close to her, so it was at an arm's distance away while I was clickety-clack typing away.”

“On the set of 'Girlboss,' I had to keep introducing myself as the show runner - literally, 'Hi, I'm the boss' - to a lot of my crew. My first AD said, 'Why do you keep doing that?' I said, 'Because I get mistaken for an extra.'”

“Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, they made it cool to be funny and to be embarrassed and to look a thousand different ways and show a bunch of different areas of their lives.”

“I loved all the people involved with '30 Rock.'”

“'Bridesmaids,' I think, opened up a door to allow women to show a bunch of different women in different ways of being funny. It was kind of like an arrival moment.”

“'Hot Pursuit,' 'Pitch Perfect 2,' 'Trainwreck,' and 'Spy' were all being done in the last year. All four of those movies I just mentioned are not rom-coms: they're all about women doing different things.”

“I'm actually from a small town about an hour and a half south of Chicago.”

“Tell your daughters and their daughters that if they want to be a firewoman, they can be a firewoman. If they want to be an astronaut, they can be an astronaut. If they want to run their own business or run for president, they can do whatever they put their mind to.”

“Society has this deeply rooted love of seeing women fail.”

“It's interesting: when you're kind of 'known' for being a writer, people don't think you've done anything else.”

“I was crazy poor, but I was learning and putting myself out there and getting hired to do whatever gig I could and auditioning.”