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" One of the jobs of comedy is to expose hypocrisy. When you look at countries like Iran or North Korea that don't have freedom of speech, we who do should push it as far as we need to. "

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" I want to show another side of Middle Easterners. My hope is that I would be able to play a variety of parts, and not always be the guy with the accent. "

Maz Jobrani

Show

Variety

Always

" Coming from L.A. to D.C., I'm always impressed that in D.C., people are doing the things that the people in L.A. are pretending to do. Whenever I'm in D.C., I ask people what they do, and they say, 'I'm with the agency, or I'm with State.' In L.A., I ran into a guy who said, 'I'm working on an audition for a guy who happens to be with an agency.' "

" Your stereotypical L.A. Persian kids were not working at Sbarro pizza in the mall, but I was. "

" I would say that while most Muslims take offense at the portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad in cartoons, they would never resort to violence. It is a minority of extremist Muslims who take such actions, and they do it for political and tactical reasons far beyond just being offended. "

" Definitely in the West, we're all cast as the same now. Whether you're Indian, Pakistani, Arab, Iranian, Afghan or whatever, you just get thrown into this category. And nine times out of 10, you're depicted as bad. "

" Here's my advice to my brown friends: The next time you're on an airplane in the U.S., just speak your mother tongue. That way, no one knows what you're saying. Life goes on. "

" People think just because I'm from the Middle East, I'm an expert on the Middle East. So, like, I got a friend, like, any time the gas prices go up, he'll always ask my opinion about it. "

Maz Jobrani

Opinion

Think

" The first time I flew after September 11, I honestly was a little paranoid. As I was going to the metal detector, I was looking at my duffel bag, and I'm like, 'Do I have anything that's like a weapon?' I was really paranoid they were gonna find something sharp, and I was gonna get in trouble. "

" I took one acting class as an undergrad, and I loved it. I was in a very avant-garde play at UCLA about a closeted, married homosexual. I played his father. "

" The fact is, there's good people everywhere. That's what I try and show in my stand-up: good people everywhere. All it takes is one person to mess it up. "

" One thing about D.C. that's funny to me is that you end up running into famous political figures who you've seen on television who you think are not real until you see them. "

" I've basically grown up in America. Even if Iran were to change, I wouldn't see myself moving there. That feeling exists for my mother and people of her generation. They say, 'Hopefully, one day.' "

" My mom was like, 'Get your law degree first, become a lawyer, and then you can tell jokes on the weekends. You can be a lawyer and just throw jokes into your presentations.' Now she's like, 'Listen, you need to come up with new material.' All of a sudden, my mom's a critic. "

" Most comics point out what everyone else is thinking but hadn't thought of verbalizing. I guess, in a way, that makes most comics seers. It just depends in what category - some choose to be the seers of relationships, some are seers of racial issues, and some are seers of political issues. "

" Every time I see Trump on TV these days, I'm waiting for him to burst out, 'Live from New York, it's Saturday Night!' That would make sense to me - that this has all been one long 'Saturday Night Live' sketch. "

Maz Jobrani

Waiting

New York

" You have to laugh at yourself. I do a lot of humor about all ethnicities that are at the show - Latinos, Asians, Indians... What I say is, 'We're laughing together. I'm laughing with you, not at you.' Never say, 'Oh, I'm better than you.' "

" Humor is always important. There are people who help us deal with difficulty or hardship; from the concentration camps to the court jester, there was a need for humor. As long as these kinds of things exist, with repressive regimes, you need it to deal with the weight of daily life. "

" I quickly came to realize that in the Middle East, God is God, and in the West, the sponsor is God - or, as I like to say, Tide detergent is God. "

" The first time I performed at the Comedy Store in Los Angeles, I was in the back of the room doing vocal exercises. 'Me-me-me, my-my-my, mo-mo-mo.' And I'm looking around, and no one else is doing it. I'm like, 'They must have done it before they came to the club.' I came to realize that I was an idiot. "

" My parents come from that immigrant culture that places a lot of emphasis on doing well scholastically. Being a comedian or an actor is such an American thing. The Iranian culture is not about dreaming. It's about taking over your father's business, falling into line. "

" It's true that some countries have more volatility, but each also has nuances we don't even know about. "

Maz Jobrani

True

Some

" As the weeks went on, I realized there was an important role comedy would play in healing the tragedies of September 11. Comedy can help people cope, and many people were coming to the clubs to laugh out the stress. "

" The way we censor in America is the dollar. That's who censors. "

" You know how hard it's been to write material? Because to do stand-up comedy, it takes time for the material to develop. So you'll come up with a joke, you'll tweak it, you'll work it for six months, you really fine tune it, and now you've got a good bit. Well, with Trump, every day there's something new coming out. "

" I jokingly say that the enemies are children, you know. I always say, if you have young kids, your whole goal from the moment they wake up is to make them tired. It's exhausting. Anybody who's got kids knows what I'm talking about. "

" I remembered, like, when 'Not When My Daughter' came out, I'm serious, I think dating for Iranian men became a lot harder. Dude's name, Shahrokh - became Tony. Mehsud became Mike. "

Maz Jobrani

Men

Daughter

" Comedy comes from tragedy, and being Iranian in America from 1979 on had been quite tragic. In stand-up comedy, I was able to take the reality and exaggerate it. "

" I've sold shows based on my standup twice to CBS, but they've never gone past the script stage. TV is very competitive. "

Maz Jobrani

Stage

Past

" The fact is, the Middle East has been going crazy for 50, 60, 70 years. So it's not like, 'Oh, I need an ISIS joke.' "

" I think it's time that we had a dad of Middle Eastern descent on TV. The time is ripe for the Middle Eastern 'Cosby Show.' Or, as I like to call it, 'The Mazby Show.' "