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" 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. "

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" 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. "

Trevor Noah

Purpose

People

Nature

" There's more outrage on Twitter about a One Direction split or about what one band member said to another than there is about institutionalized racism and something huge. "

" I was doing a show at the Comedy Store which Eddie Izzard saw, and we chatted for a bit afterwards. I didn't really know he was; we just hung out as comedians together, and when he heard my story, he said, 'Why don't you tell that on stage?' I didn't really want to burden people with all that, but he said that I could have fun with it. "

" I live in South Africa. I'm proud to live there. I've always said I want to be a comedian from South Africa in the world. I will stay in places for a bit here and there and pop into New York for a while, maybe stay in London for a year, but my home will always be South Africa. I enjoy it too much. "

" I always believe that funny is serious and serious is funny. You don't really need a distinction between them. "

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

" Maybe it's because I come from a very utopian world of being a comedian, but I'm used to many live comedy performances going on in any city I'm in, and each of us is trying to be the best at what we do. I don't think of it as a competition so much as a thriving comedy economy. "

" 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?' "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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'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. "

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

Trevor Noah

Know

Laugh

" 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 was born in South Africa during apartheid, a system of laws that made it illegal for people to mix in South Africa. And this was obviously awkward because I grew up in a mixed family. My mother's a black woman, South African Xhosa woman... and my father's Swiss, from Switzerland. "

" 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. "

" Africa's not a color - it's a place. "

" When you are honest in your comedy, you have to acknowledge the world that you're in. Through a comedic voice, you're talking about what needs to be talked about, whether it's race relations or politics or anything that's happening on a global or an American scale. "

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

" 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

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

" I'm a quarterback. I don't need to score the touchdown. I just need to spot the pass. "

" 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 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. "

" You have two choices, two paths to take as a comedian. You can tackle the difficult subjects and be harsh about it, be brash, be abrasive. But adding hatred to racism is not going to help everybody. So I like to have fun around it. "

" 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