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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
Like
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" Most of my exposure to American pop culture was through this weird prism of 'Mad' magazine. "
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" 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? "
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" I was actually looking at the poster for 'Tarzan,' and I was thinking how abs look so different now. These are not your grandma's abs. They go so deep and so sharp now. "
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" Nobody really knows what they're doing. Some are just better at pretending like they do. "
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" 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. "
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" My parents don't really understand my career. They don't really bring it up that much. "
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" I started doing standup because of Hugh Grant's best-man speech in 'Four Weddings,' which is basically a standup routine. "
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Doing
" 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. "
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" When generally people make race-based jokes to me - even if they're not technically racist, they're sort of based on me being Pakistani or whatever - on Twitter, you know, I block a lot of people who say something weird about my name or something. It does bug me generally, but it is all about context. "
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" It happens to people. People ruin things they love! I'm sure the guy who played Jar Jar Binks loved 'Star Wars.' "
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Loved
" When I started working on 'Michael And Michael,' it was my life for three to four months, and then suddenly it's gone. "
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" I'll tell you, nobody was more excited than me, in the entire world, that there is a 'Silicon Valley' Funko set. "
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" I just hope that there's a market for somebody who looks like me as the lead of a rom-com, you know? "
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" I love, love, love the street-cart food. Gyros are like a meat-flavored fruit roll-up. A meat roll-up. "
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" I would say I try to make my comedy really personal. I try to tell stories that happened to me, experiences from my life. "
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" You can go slow. Allow your dreams and goals to change, but live an intentional life. "
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Change
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" 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. "
Kumail Nanjiani
Know
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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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Appreciation
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" Being a fish out of water is tough, but that's how you evolve. "
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" 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. "
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" I grew up watching 'Ghostbusters' and 'Knight Rider' and Hot Wheels commercials. When I got to college, having never set foot in America, I knew more American pop-culture references than my friends did. "
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" I didn't know if I could be funny on stage or write a joke. But I saw that there are no rules. If you're funny offstage, you can figure out a way to be funny onstage. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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Worst
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" I'm still trying to figure out how to have an adult relationship with my parents. "
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" 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. "
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