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" I still don't have a real appreciation for music because I didn't really start listening to it until my 20s. My wife knows everything about music, and I try and get her to educate me, but it's just not part of my DNA. "

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" I think, you know, a lot of the business of comedy is taking your personal experiences and making them relatable to other people. "

Kumail Nanjiani

People

Know

You

" I just hope that there's a market for somebody who looks like me as the lead of a rom-com, you know? "

Kumail Nanjiani

Looks

Know

" Stand-up is successful if they laugh. It's unsuccessful if they don't laugh. "

" I remember my jaw would hurt because I wasn't used to speaking English all the time. Like how, even if you exercise, you'll play kickball one day, and then you're like, 'Wait, I run, but new places are hurting because I don't use my muscles this way.' My mouth was not used to making these sounds. "

" Populate your life with people different from you. Once you leave school, you get to choose the kinds of people you're going to be around rather than forced to be around them. "

" I'd love to be in action movies. I've been trying to convince people. I don't think it's anything physical holding me back. I think it's a general vibe thing that's holding me back. I don't project action confidence, maybe. "

Kumail Nanjiani

Confidence

Love

" I would say I try to make my comedy really personal. I try to tell stories that happened to me, experiences from my life. "

" I started doing standup because of Hugh Grant's best-man speech in 'Four Weddings,' which is basically a standup routine. "

" The world is getting smaller. And people are bumping up against people from different parts of the world with very different points of view. The challenge of our time is going to be, how do you allow other points of view to exist within what you traditionally see as your world? "

" I'm from a family of doctors, and I think they really wanted me to be a doctor. I even sort of assumed I would be a doctor. "

Kumail Nanjiani

Family

Doctor

" Wikipedia is kind of weird. I feel it's lame to put up my own page, but I desperately want someone else to do it. "

" If you do a sketch, that's a very short narrative. Stand-up, it's bit-to-bit, minute-long narratives. "

" My mom told us never to reveal that we were Shia in school. You would find out that some other kid was Shiite, and you would whisper, 'Hey,' or you would see someone at the mosque, and you'd be like, 'Hey, that kid's Shiite!' There was a lot of tension, a lot of violence in Karachi between Shiites and Sunnis. "

" I know a lot of brown actors who play terrorists because they're physically intimidating. For me, it was like, 'O.K., you'll be the nerd.' So I've played the nerd. I've played food-delivery guys. But I always tried to find something in the characters so that they weren't just defined by what they looked like. "

" Because of the Internet, you're sort of forced to deal with people from very different backgrounds and beliefs. It's a great challenge of our time, and depending on when you ask me, I feel optimistic or pessimistic about it. "

" It happens to people. People ruin things they love! I'm sure the guy who played Jar Jar Binks loved 'Star Wars.' "

" Nobody really knows what they're doing. Some are just better at pretending like they do. "

Kumail Nanjiani

Pretending

Nobody

" You really need to have that discipline. It's not even discipline. I just put down these rules. It's not like a vague, 'Motivate yourself!' and do something. It's specific hours set aside every day for certain things. "

" You can get stuck in the trap of reading your YouTube comments all the time. Sometimes I regret it. Not everyone is going to love you. And for some reason, stand-up has this thing where everyone thinks they can do it. So everyone thinks they're an expert. "

" I've always played some version of a nerdy guy or something like that. I mean, one of my story lines on 'Silicon Valley' is that I am very bad with women! "

" Studio execs were like, ''Lord of the Rings!' People want to see sword-and-dragon-type things!' No, people just want to see great stories. Hollywood always takes the wrong lesson from successes. "

" I've found that the common humanity of people is the most relatable thing, and even if your stories are very specific about a different place, if you have a relatable core of humanity, people will go along with it. "

Kumail Nanjiani

Will

Humanity

" Most of my exposure to American pop culture was through this weird prism of 'Mad' magazine. "

" Most people don't really do too many things because they're afraid they'll fail. There are people failing all the time, all around you. And nobody is going to notice your failure. Your failure is not going to be so spectacular that people write news stories about it. Your failure will be boring. "

" I have a reward-and-punishment system: If I have done this much work, then I can play video games this long. It gives my day structure. "

" I thought, from watching TV and stuff, that America was one place. They only show you L.A. and New York. They don't warn you about Iowa. "

" I never decided I wanted to be an actor. I just started doing standup because I love standup. Everything else has sort of been these tiny steps leading to this. "

" The plan was always to come to America, because Pakistan's a scary place. They don't have religious freedom. It's very poor, and there's a lot of violence and corruption. "

" I moved to New York first and was really apprehensive about moving to L.A., but I really, really like it. "

Kumail Nanjiani

Moving

New

" I never really got into game shows. The easiest one is 'Wheel Of Fortune' because you just have to know words, and for the most part everyone knows words. "