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" 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. "

Trevor Noah

Father

Years

See

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" There's more outrage on Twitter about a One Direction split or about what one band member said to another than there is about institutionalized racism and something huge. "

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" I was doing a show at the Comedy Store which Eddie Izzard saw, and we chatted for a bit afterwards. I didn't really know he was; we just hung out as comedians together, and when he heard my story, he said, 'Why don't you tell that on stage?' I didn't really want to burden people with all that, but he said that I could have fun with it. "

" I've always been a fan of issues around race and racialism, and I've loved playing with it. People act as though it isn't an issue, but it's a recurring theme in our lives globally. "

" I've never been afraid to fall in love, nor impatient to find it. "

" 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

" 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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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

" When you are honest in your comedy, you have to acknowledge the world that you're in. Through a comedic voice, you're talking about what needs to be talked about, whether it's race relations or politics or anything that's happening on a global or an American scale. "

" 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. "

" The older you get, the more you start to realize that you can't win an argument in a relationship. You can't win a fight with your woman. Because if you lose, you lose. And if you win, you lose. "

" I'm a quarterback. I don't need to score the touchdown. I just need to spot the pass. "

" My mom used to get arrested for being with my dad. She would get fined. She would spend weekends in jail. "

" 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?' "

" Nobody owns comedy. Nobody owns a premise. Nobody owns an idea. "

" I'm not an abrasive person. I do speak my mind, but my goal is never to offend. I don't intentionally want to strike a chord. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I live in a country where I'd say nine out of ten people know me when I walk through the streets. There's people taking pictures, there's tabloids trying to make up stories. I'm used to that. The same thing when I'm in Australia or the U.K.: I get stopped. "