I thought, from watching TV and stuff, that America was one place. They only show you L.A. and New York. They don't warn you about Iowa.
— Kumail Nanjiani
I stay home. It's the best place to be alone. There is hardly any walk-through traffic.
I would say I try to make my comedy really personal. I try to tell stories that happened to me, experiences from my life.
When generally people make race-based jokes to me - even if they're not technically racist, they're sort of based on me being Pakistani or whatever - on Twitter, you know, I block a lot of people who say something weird about my name or something. It does bug me generally, but it is all about context.
I'm from a family of doctors, and I think they really wanted me to be a doctor. I even sort of assumed I would be a doctor.
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.
If you do a sketch, that's a very short narrative. Stand-up, it's bit-to-bit, minute-long narratives.
In popular culture, there isn't any other conception of Islam and Muslims other than what you see on the news... When you go to a theme park, you see Muslims riding roller coasters and eating ice cream. Why doesn't anybody think of those Muslims when they think of Muslims?
I love, love, love the street-cart food. Gyros are like a meat-flavored fruit roll-up. A meat roll-up.
I've found that the common humanity of people is the most relatable thing, and even if your stories are very specific about a different place, if you have a relatable core of humanity, people will go along with it.
I never really got into game shows. The easiest one is 'Wheel Of Fortune' because you just have to know words, and for the most part everyone knows words.
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.
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.
Stand-up is successful if they laugh. It's unsuccessful if they don't laugh.
'Four Weddings and a Funeral' is one of my favorite movies, and I laugh all the time, and I cry during the one funeral. But I'll say that 'Monsters, Inc.' is a movie that really gets me super-emotional. Especially the ending.
I moved to New York first and was really apprehensive about moving to L.A., but I really, really like it.
I think, you know, a lot of the business of comedy is taking your personal experiences and making them relatable to other people.
Honestly, I would love to be friends with Fox Mulder on 'The X-Files.' That's almost a little too obvious, but that would be my answer. I'd love to hang out with him.
You can get stuck in the trap of reading your YouTube comments all the time. Sometimes I regret it. Not everyone is going to love you. And for some reason, stand-up has this thing where everyone thinks they can do it. So everyone thinks they're an expert.
When I started working on 'Michael And Michael,' it was my life for three to four months, and then suddenly it's gone.
