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" I used to like to come up with inventions because I hated working so much when I had my day job. I thought, 'All I need is a great idea, and I'm out of here.' "

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" My parents aren't the demographic for a lot of things I do. If I did a stand-up show, and I saw 62-year-old Pakistanis in the crowd, I'd be like, 'I'm gonna bomb.' "

Kumail Nanjiani

Parents

Lot

" I know what is funny coming out of my mouth and what is not funny coming out of my mouth. You have to figure out, What is the joke that I can do that nobody else can do? "

" 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

" I started a podcast about 'X-Files' and ended up on it. Then I started a podcast about video games, and I'm in the new 'Mass Effect' game. I have to pick the stuff I love and do a podcast on it. "

" I had this very strict rule when I began auditioning that I wasn't gonna do a thicker accent, because it was like, 'I can't tell if it's supposed to be funny because he talks funny.' And now I feel like there are certain characters that I could play that could involve doing a thicker accent, as long as it's specific to that character. "

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

" I always felt that it was never the duty of a person to really stand up for their gender or their race or anything like that - I always felt that was a personal choice. But I do feel now that maybe my opinion is evolving or changing a little bit. "

" When I started working on 'Michael And Michael,' it was my life for three to four months, and then suddenly it's gone. "

" 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 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'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

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

" 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! "

" One of my favorite comedies is 'Shaun of the Dead.' "

" I loved the Oscars, and I had V.H.S. tapes for the Oscars, and I used to watch them over and over. There was probably one year where I watched it, like, 20 times or something. "

" 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. "

Kumail Nanjiani

Appreciation

Listening

" My parents don't really understand my career. They don't really bring it up that much. "

Kumail Nanjiani

Understand

Parents

" I'm a massive rom-com head! Like, every rom-com in the '90s and early 2000s, I've watched. "

" The worst job I ever had was an office job that I had for six years, and that's nothing against the people who I was surrounded by, because they were wonderful people. "

" 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. "

" TV requires a lot more patience. No one's ever like, 'I gotta get up at 5 A.M. and write my stand-up!' It's an easy life. With 'Silicon Valley,' it's long hours and very unglamorous. "

" I stay home. It's the best place to be alone. There is hardly any walk-through traffic. "

" 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. "

" I was not a cool kid. There was no reason for me to be marginalised. I was just a nerd. I was kind of weird, and I found solace in video games. "

" I don't want to generalize, but the target audience for a lot of the YouTube people is fairly young - under the age of 16. You still want to know what those people are watching, because I think it's interesting, but sometimes it just makes you feel old. "

" You just don't see Muslims being matter-of-fact Muslim. They're always defined by their Muslim-ness. We're either terrorists, or we're fighting terrorists. I remember seeing 'True Lies' and going, 'Why are we always the bad guys?' "

" 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. "

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

Kumail Nanjiani

Pretending

Nobody

" When I was studying comedy in Chicago, it wasn't long after 9/11. There were a lot Middle Eastern comedians who were doing bits about hailing cabs and being terrorists. So the first two years, I didn't do any of that because I wanted to separate myself from those guys. But race is a big part of who I am, and it should be a big part of my comedy. "