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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. "
Kumail Nanjiani
Life
People
Choose
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" 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. "
Kumail Nanjiani
Love
Video Games
Game
" 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. "
Kumail Nanjiani
Violence
School
Mom
" Stand-up is successful if they laugh. It's unsuccessful if they don't laugh. "
Kumail Nanjiani
Laugh
Unsuccessful
Successful
" 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. "
Kumail Nanjiani
You
Way
Stage
" Studio execs were like, ''Lord of the Rings!' People want to see sword-and-dragon-type things!' No, people just want to see great stories. Hollywood always takes the wrong lesson from successes. "
Kumail Nanjiani
Hollywood
Want
People
" 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? "
Kumail Nanjiani
Challenge
Time
View
" I'm a massive rom-com head! Like, every rom-com in the '90s and early 2000s, I've watched. "
Kumail Nanjiani
Every
Early
Head
" 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. "
Kumail Nanjiani
Great
Challenge
People
" I started doing standup because of Hugh Grant's best-man speech in 'Four Weddings,' which is basically a standup routine. "
Kumail Nanjiani
Routine
Started
Doing
" 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. "
Kumail Nanjiani
Interesting
Think
People
" When I started working on 'Michael And Michael,' it was my life for three to four months, and then suddenly it's gone. "
Kumail Nanjiani
Life
My Life
Working
" 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
Play
You
" 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. "
Kumail Nanjiani
People
Worst
Nothing
" 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. "
Kumail Nanjiani
Now
Deep
Go
" I don't go, 'It is now time to change Americans' perception of Muslims. It's going to be a long day.' I think you just try to be unique and try to be yourself, and if something good comes of that, then great. "
Kumail Nanjiani
Change
Day
Yourself
" Nobody really knows what they're doing. Some are just better at pretending like they do. "
Kumail Nanjiani
Pretending
Nobody
Like
" I would say I try to make my comedy really personal. I try to tell stories that happened to me, experiences from my life. "
Kumail Nanjiani
Comedy
My Life
Say
" 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
Me
" 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
" Living in Pakistan, you didn't have a sense of how huge and varied America was geographically. I had visited once. I thought of it as this crazy, happy, exciting place where everybody's rich, and there's stuff everywhere. Compared to Pakistan, it's not untrue. Compared to Pakistan, the streets are paved with gold. "
Kumail Nanjiani
Rich
Thought
Happy
" 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. "
Kumail Nanjiani
Funny
Doing
Character
" Think about when you were 12 or 13. The stuff I watched was awful! I tried to watch a 'He-Man' cartoon recently, and I was like, 'Oh my God!' I just had, like, a small brain. I was stupid. "
Kumail Nanjiani
Stupid
You
Brain
" Rom-coms have been one of my favorite genres of movies since I can remember. My favorite movie of all-time is 'Four Weddings and a Funeral,' and then 'When Harry Met Sally,' and 'Annie Hall' is top five. "
Kumail Nanjiani
Movies
Four
Five
" I'm still trying to figure out how to have an adult relationship with my parents. "
Kumail Nanjiani
Relationship
Parents
Out
" I think, you know, a lot of the business of comedy is taking your personal experiences and making them relatable to other people. "
Kumail Nanjiani
People
Know
You
" Wikipedia is kind of weird. I feel it's lame to put up my own page, but I desperately want someone else to do it. "
Kumail Nanjiani
Someone
Kind
Feel
" I stay home. It's the best place to be alone. There is hardly any walk-through traffic. "
Kumail Nanjiani
Traffic
Home
Best
" 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. "
Kumail Nanjiani
Year
Loved
Over
" You really need to have that discipline. It's not even discipline. I just put down these rules. It's not like a vague, 'Motivate yourself!' and do something. It's specific hours set aside every day for certain things. "
Kumail Nanjiani
Day
Rules
Discipline
" Being a fish out of water is tough, but that's how you evolve. "
Kumail Nanjiani
Out
Fish
Evolve