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" 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. "

Trevor Noah

Night

Daily

Driving

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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. "

" 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. "

" 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'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 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. "

" 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'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?' "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

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

Trevor Noah

Know

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

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

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

" 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 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. "

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

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

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

" 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.' "

" 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

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