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" Trump is good for comedy but bad for the world. "

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" 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. "

" 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 meet a lot of people when I do stand-up in the Middle East, and I don't know any terrorists, yet on TV and in the movies, 9 out of 10 are depicted as terrorists. "

" 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.' "

" My mother was very wary at first. And now she's come around 180 degrees. She's, like, one of my biggest fans now. Like, she'll come over to my house, and she'll be like, 'OK, listen. I need two T-shirts from the comedy show, and give me three DVDs. The neighbors are asking for them.' "

" Anyone who's gotten their passport in America will tell you, when you get it, it still says what country you were born in. So I remember getting my American passport. I was like, 'Woo-hoo! I'm going to travel.' And I opened it up. It said, 'Born in Iran.' I'm like, 'Oh, come on, man!' "

" 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. "

Freedom Of Speech

" Iranians and Arabs aren't considered diversity because we still don't have minority status in America. There was a group of Middle Eastern actors trying to get SAG to recognize us as part of the diversity they should look out for, because we do represent a different point of view. When OscarsSoWhite happened, I felt part of that. "

" A lot of times in Hollywood, when casting directors find out you're of Middle Eastern descent, they go, 'Oh, you're Iranian? Great. Can you say, 'I will kill you in the name of Allah?'' I could say that, but what if I were to say, 'Hello, I'm your doctor.' "

" 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. "

" 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.' "

" As a Middle Eastern male, I know there's certain things I'm not supposed to say on an airplane in the U.S., right? I'm not supposed to be walking down the aisle, and be like, 'Hi, Jack.' That's not cool. Even if I'm there with my friend named Jack, I say, 'Greetings, Jack. Salutations, Jack.' Never 'Hi, Jack.' "

" 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. "

" 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.' "

" I really love D.C.; it's one of my favorite places to perform. I always say when I come here, I feel like my IQ increases by 20 points. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Coming from an immigrant background, where a lot of parents don't want their kids to be comedians, success was just showing my mom that I could make a living. I was like, if I can get my mom off my back, that was my success. "

" 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. "

" Part of what's great about America, and Canada as well, is that we can talk about our political leaders in public. "

" 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. "

" I saw the discrimination that was happening towards Middle Easterners, Muslims and other brown people who had nothing to do with 9/11. It suddenly felt like a duty of mine to talk about some of the crazy things that were going on and make fun of how stupid it was. "

" If you come from a place of love, and you're not saying, 'I'm better than you,' that's one thing that allows you to talk about different ethnicities. It's almost like laughing with each other. "

" 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 am a political human being. I have - that's one of my interests. I studied political science in college. I was actually going to get my Ph.D. in poli-sci. And a lot of my material from early on in my career dealt with politics, so I've always considered myself as somebody who enjoys political humor. So I'm not going to stop. "

" One of the first memories I have, we went to - actually, we stopped in New York for a little bit, and I remember going to Macy's with my mom. And I was a big fan of the color orange, and they had Snoopy orange gloves, hat and scarves. And I bought it, and it was the best thing ever. I loved America right there. That was it. "

" I am a standup comedian who has performed comedy in the Middle East in front of thousands of Muslims. And believe it or not, they laughed at plenty, especially when we poked fun at local culture. The Lebanese loved it when you would make fun of their driving and how, in Lebanon, a red light is just a suggestion to stop. "

" I was at UC Berkeley as an undergrad when my father lost a lot of money in real estate investments in Northern California. He wanted a change of pace, so in the early '90s, my family moved to L.A., right in the middle of Tehrangeles. It was a culture shock for me. "

" 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. "

" You know, funny can be universal. "