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" During my New York run, I injured my voice badly. I was getting increasingly hoarse, and it finally gave up. The doctor said I had two choices. Either cancel things, or try my luck and perhaps never speak again. That's not much of a choice. "

Trevor Noah

Choices

Voice

New York

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" Maybe it's because I come from a very utopian world of being a comedian, but I'm used to many live comedy performances going on in any city I'm in, and each of us is trying to be the best at what we do. I don't think of it as a competition so much as a thriving comedy economy. "

" I like the anonymity, the fact that you're a stranger making strangers laugh. You aren't forcing them to laugh - it's involuntary, and that's when they give the most honest response. "

Trevor Noah

You

Laugh

" I was born in South Africa during apartheid, a system of laws that made it illegal for people to mix in South Africa. And this was obviously awkward because I grew up in a mixed family. My mother's a black woman, South African Xhosa woman... and my father's Swiss, from Switzerland. "

" I lost contact with my father for many years because of apartheid. For, like, six years, I didn't see my dad. And, now, this was the six years of being a teenager. "

" The first purpose of comedy is to make people laugh. Anything deeper is a bonus. Some comedians want to make people laugh and make them think about socially relevant issues, but comedy, by the very nature of the word, is to make people laugh. If people aren't laughing, it's not comedy. It's as simple as that. "

" If you laugh with somebody, then you know you share something. "

Trevor Noah

Know

Laugh

" I live in South Africa. I'm proud to live there. I've always said I want to be a comedian from South Africa in the world. I will stay in places for a bit here and there and pop into New York for a while, maybe stay in London for a year, but my home will always be South Africa. I enjoy it too much. "

" My mom, through my dad, rented the apartment next door to his... he had the lease on both places. But then, she would dress up and act like his maid... a practical maid. No fantasies. "

Trevor Noah

Dress

Door

" I'm not a confrontational person or comedian. I think we can explore more things if one of us is not fighting with the other. I take it easy. But I do like comedians who are very different from myself: I love dry comics with deadpan one-liners. I look on and think, 'That's amazing; why didn't I think of that?' "

" As a comedian, I'm forced to have a tough skin. Until people laugh, they are detractors. You walk into a new audience where nobody knows you, they go: 'Make us laugh. Show us what you're made of. Prove why we should be listening to you.' "

" What I've always said about comedy is if you do it in the right way, you can say anything to anybody because they know where you're coming from. They know it's not malicious. "

" America was a thing I saw on TV - that wasn't a real world. That wasn't within my realm of dreaming. "

" I'm not a big Hollywood guy. I don't know how the machine works. I leave that to people better than myself. "

" I want my audience to be my friends - that is when they will get the best comedy. If they see me as a performer, they won't get the best show. "

" We live in the Internet age. Everyone wants clicks. Clicks are what sells. "

" You have two choices, two paths to take as a comedian. You can tackle the difficult subjects and be harsh about it, be brash, be abrasive. But adding hatred to racism is not going to help everybody. So I like to have fun around it. "

" I'm literally driving in the middle of the night, and my phone rings, and my manager says, 'How would you like to be the host of the Daily Show?' I get out the car, and I didn't have legs. You know in those movies where there's an explosion? But instead of the sound of the explosion, you hear the silence. That's literally what happened. "

" I don't think I have thick skin, but I heal fast. It's easy to break through, but I heal fast. "

" I was the first in my family to board an airplane. I was the first in my family to get kicked off an airplane. "

" We get angry about the small things sometimes, I feel, so that we feel like we're doing something, so that we don't have to tackle the big things. And it's fine; let people do that. But I'm not gonna now change because of that. You know? Like, the worst thing that happens to me is you don't like me. And then what? "

Trevor Noah

People

Small Things

" The truth is, people don't know me. When people don't know you, they're going to try to get to know you as quickly as possible, because you're now taking the place of somebody that they love dearly, or somebody that they hate sincerely, and so they need to know who you are. "

Trevor Noah

Hate

Love

" Comedy is really getting quite popular in South Africa. "

" If I'm doing something on stage, and it evokes an emotion, then I might show that emotion, but I also don't believe in being a preacher. If you have a point, that's a bonus. But the funny has to come first; otherwise, you shouldn't call yourself a comedian. "

" If you look at it, the history of comedy has always been strongest among the nations who have been persecuted the most. "

" I always believe that funny is serious and serious is funny. You don't really need a distinction between them. "

" We've got so many different cultural groups in my family that I've had to learn to accommodate them in different ways. My father speaks different to my mum. My mum speaks different to my grandmother. Everybody speaks different, so you find you start tweaking your language to be more accessible to people. "

" Africa's not a color - it's a place. "