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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. "

Trevor Noah

Story

Fun

Have Fun

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" 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. "

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

Trevor Noah

Know

Laugh

" 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. "

" 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.' "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I don't know how to let loose when I'm dancing to the music and the people that made the music are watching me. I've never felt so much pressure in my life. "

" 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. "

" Most of my show is true; like, 90% of everything I say on stage is true. I just have to find the way to make it funny - that's the difficult thing. "

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

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

" My ideal setting is I walk from the streets, backstage, and straight onto the stage. Two minutes, and I am on the stage. That way, in my head I have gone from my world and then into a social setting with my friends. "

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

" 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'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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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

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

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

" 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. "

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

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

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

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