Sarah Cooper Quotes

I used to think Medium was a pretty pure place and then the MAGA hats started showing up here too.

Selling an idea to a publisher is not as valuable as selling your audience to a publisher.

Don’t treat your ideas like they’re nothing, don’t treat yourself like you’re nothing, because you and your ideas are important and meaningful and have the potential to become so much more than you realize.

I was born in Jamaica, my whole family’s Jamaican, and they always give me a hard time for being the least Jamaican member of the family. But I think it’s their fault for naming me Sarah.

Twitter is a cesspool but I find I can ignore most of the cess most of the time.

The only time my Dad ever said I might have not gotten something because of how I look was when I auditioned for Tyler Perry’s ‘Meet the Browns.’ My dad didn’t think I was ‘black enough’ for the show. My dad isn’t the most politically correct person.

As a woman of color, I’ve come to rely on straight white men telling me my experience of the world has nothing to do with my gender, race or class. (Unless something good happens to me, in which case they tell me my gender, race and/or class is exactly why that thing happened).

I love book clubs. I just hate reading and talking to people.

Men love explaining things. But when he’s explaining something and you already know that, it might be tempting to say ‘I already know that.’ Instead, have him explain it to you over and over again. It will make him feel useful and will give you some time to think about out how to avoid him in the future.

Women say things that are direct – they are told they are too abrasive. I got that feedback in the corporate world.

There are many ways to deal with annoying coworkers, but obviously the most effective way is to picture them as rappers. Picturing your coworkers as rappers makes you laugh and provides a helpful nickname that can be used when talking about them behind their backs.

People really hate Trump – a lot. They hate his voice. They hate looking at him. They hate everything about him.

I can’t tell you how excited I was when I joined my first book club, but I can tell you how much I immediately regretted it.

There’s at least one person on every team that everyone likes to make fun of.

The desire to get from point A to point B in the shortest, most efficient amount of time without ever wandering off path, can mean you miss out on those happy accidents that push you further and faster in a direction you never even considered.

The path to achieving your goals, as an entrepreneur or as part of a company, is just as important as reaching them. That’s something I hope men can see as well. If you’re going to be stepping on people to get there, that’s not good. It doesn’t matter if you get there if you leave a path of destroyed people behind you.

My inability to stick with any journal or calendar has been a pattern for God-since-forever.

If we want little girls and young women and people of color to see they have a place in the tech world, it’s up to us to make that place for them.

When you know in your heart that you and your ideas are important, you will give every idea you have a fighting chance.

Innovation at large companies is hard, but it doesn’t have to be.

In this fast-paced business world, female leaders need to make sure they’re not perceived as pushy, aggressive or competent. One way to do that is to alter your leadership style to account for the (sometimes) fragile male ego.

When you’re Jamaican, you don’t consider yourself African American even though everyone else considers you that.

Believe it or not, joining a video conference call from home doesn’t always have to make you feel like an idiot.

Like everyone, appearing smart during meetings is my top priority. Sometimes this can be difficult if you start daydreaming about your next vacation, your next nap, or bacon.

I didn’t set out to be a Trump impressionist at all. It wasn’t that I wanted to be Trump. It’s that I was asking, ‘What if Trump was me?’

Never, ever, ever show up to your office holiday party on time.

Trump is an amazing comedy writer without realizing it.

You absolutely cannot be big time tech guy without attending Burning Man.

When you take yourself seriously you will make others take you seriously. You will put your ideas out there. You won’t hide them. You won’t delete them. You will keep trying.

Sarah Cooper sounds like a character on ‘The O.C.,’ who was written out in season two, and it’s like she moved into my body and gentrified my whole personality.

Live comedy in a club, with an audience – it’s hard to recreate that experience in a digital world. With Zoom, your face is there the whole time, and you feel like you have to always be on. You feel like you always have to be paying attention, and it can be exhausting.

Engineers aren’t professional grammarticians, but they love correcting people. Even more, they love making you feel stupid.

One of the reasons I moved to San Francisco was the weather. And then I realized that I really don’t like being outside.

I love how much people are drawn to my ‘impersonations’ of Trump because they aren’t really impersonations at all. I’m not trying to be Trump so much as I’m trying to make Trump me. In doing them, I simply ask myself, ‘How would I, Sarah Cooper, say these words?’

When sharing your ideas, overconfidence is a killer. You don’t want your male coworkers to think you’re getting all uppity. Instead, downplay your ideas as just ‘thinking out loud,’ ‘throwing something out there,’ or sharing something ‘dumb,’ ‘random,’ or ‘crazy.’

Nothing makes everyone feel more like the meeting was worth it, than ending by saying it would be good to follow up when everyone’s in the same place.

For most of my 20s I felt the need to focus solely on my goals and let nothing distract me.

Laughing is important. It’s healing.

People are like, ‘How did you get so funny?’ And I’m like, ‘Wait, am I funny?’

Creating a distraction is a skill we should all have. Never take for granted your ability to spot something interesting out of the corner of you eye and take attention away from your thoughtlessness.

I just want everyone who voted for Donald Trump to get what they deserve. But then I remember most people didn’t vote for him, and they shouldn’t suffer.

Getting up and drawing a Venn diagram is a great way to appear smart. It doesn’t matter if your Venn diagram is wildly inaccurate, in fact, the more inaccurate the better.

Nothing is more embarrassing than calling someone the wrong name, but nothing is harder than trying to pretend you know someone’s name when you don’t.

Satire makes people learn something more than being lectured.

Who’s more annoying to work with, boomers or millennials? Depends on how you feel about emojis.