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" When I told my parents I wanted to be an actor, my mom was, like, 'I think I heard you say lawyer.' "

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" I've had people come up to me after the show and say, 'Why did you not make fun of Pakistan?' People are actually upset you didn't talk about them. "

" 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 grew up in Northern California - Marin County, Tiburon. And it's interesting. It's a very rich place, but a lot of the affluent people are - they're not as showy. So, like, they might have, like, a Saab or a Volvo. And then here comes my dad from Iran. He buys a Rolls-Royce. "

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

" You know, funny can be universal. "

" I've always had a foot in everything. As a kid, I was active in sports and theater. Now, I'm learning I have to focus a bit. I'm trying to get to next projects, like writing a screenplay. Once that comes together, I could put my mind to another book - maybe a fun kids' book. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Follow your heart. Do what you love. Because I was constantly struggling with that. If it's in your heart, go for it. Don't listen to other people. "

Do What You Love

" 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 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.' "

" 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

" 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 started acting in junior high. I was in 'Guys and Dolls.' I was Stanley Kowalski. In my head, before coming to Hollywood, I thought, 'I can play anything.' "

" I'm not saying that I'm on some crusade to change people's minds. I'm just doing what I do. I'm a comedian, I'm trying to be funny... I think when they see a comedy show with an Iranian and an Egyptian and two Palestinians, I think they go, 'Oh wow, these guys are just like us.' "

" As a Middle Eastern male, when you're in a Chuck Norris movie of the week, you know you're going to die. "

" 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. "

" 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.' "

" Be kind. It feels good. "

" 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. "

" Any standup that you see who you go, 'Oh, wow, that guy's, you know, that guy's making it.' Inevitably, they've been doing it 10, 12 years - 10, 15 years. Because it takes time. "

" 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.' "

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

" 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. "

" Once you start listening to the comics, be they Jewish, Muslim, Italian, Filipino or whatever, the material often springs from the same source - the overbearing mom, the parents who want you to marry from within your community. That's why the 'Ethnic Show' works so well. "

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

" When you're a stand-up comic, you live and die by what you say on stage. There's no director or writer or producer who can tell you what to say and not to say. Once in a while, a club owner will ask a comic to work clean, or not say something, but that's few and far between. "