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" 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. "

Maz Jobrani

Die

Say

Stage

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" Trump doesn't go a day without worrying me. It seems like every day there's something new. "

Maz Jobrani

Without

New

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

" I've grown so accustomed to my life in L.A., going to a Coffee Bean or getting breakfast at Kings Road Cafe. I've seen a lot of the world, but the diversity we have here is different. It's a mishmash, which is a nice comfort. "

" 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.' "

" 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!' "

" I was in awe of my father. His generosity was beyond anything I ever could imagine. The reason I say he's like Don Corleone is he was always breaking off hundreds. I'd be like, 'Hey Dad, I'm going to McDonald's with my friends,' and he'd just whip out a hundred: 'Here, go, have fun.' "

" The first acting part I ever got was a guest spot on 'Chicago Hope' playing a security guard. I thought, 'Oh, this is going to be cool.' But a little bit later, I got a vague part on this short-lived show called 'Marshall Law' with Arsenio Hall and Sammo Hung. It was a poor man's 'Rush Hour.' "

" You know, funny can be universal. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" A cultural thing that is funny to me is that every time I go out in D.C. after a show, all the nightclubs and restaurants are owned by Iranians and Afghans. It's funny to me how we lost our countries but we gained the nightlife. "

Maz Jobrani

Time

Funny

" 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. "

" 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.' "

" Racism has always existed, and a big part of it is people just not knowing others. I think humans change other human's minds, and it's hard for someone in the middle of America to hate Syrian refugees if they've been able to befriend them. "

" 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. "

" 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

" 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.' "

" 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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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.' "

Maz Jobrani

She

Comedy

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Stereotypes exist because there's always some truth to stereotypes. Not always, but often. "

" I think it's funny that nobody wants to be liked by Washington. All the politicians go, 'I don't like Washington. They don't like me.' I always find it funny that people are trying to distance themselves from Washington as much as they can, even though they're all in Washington. "

Maz Jobrani

Think

Funny

" 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. "