Being a fish out of water is tough, but that's how you evolve.
Kumail Nanjiani
You can go slow. Allow your dreams and goals to change, but live an intentional life.
The world is getting smaller. And people are bumping up against people from different parts of the world with very different points of view. The challenge of our time is going to be, how do you allow other points of view to exist within what you traditionally see as your world?
Nobody really knows what they're doing. Some are just better at pretending like they do.
There was one week where I got mistaken for Hasan Minhaj, who is on 'The Daily Show;' Kunal Nayyar, who's on 'Big Bang Theory;' and Karan Soni of 'Ghostbusters.' This was one week.
I'll tell you, nobody was more excited than me, in the entire world, that there is a 'Silicon Valley' Funko set.
My parents aren't the demographic for a lot of things I do. If I did a stand-up show, and I saw 62-year-old Pakistanis in the crowd, I'd be like, 'I'm gonna bomb.'
Stand-up is successful if they laugh. It's unsuccessful if they don't laugh.
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.
Rom-coms have been one of my favorite genres of movies since I can remember. My favorite movie of all-time is 'Four Weddings and a Funeral,' and then 'When Harry Met Sally,' and 'Annie Hall' is top five.
I love, love, love the street-cart food. Gyros are like a meat-flavored fruit roll-up. A meat roll-up.
A lot of times, it seems like social media has devolved into people just yelling at each other and not really conversing.
Most people don't really do too many things because they're afraid they'll fail. There are people failing all the time, all around you. And nobody is going to notice your failure. Your failure is not going to be so spectacular that people write news stories about it. Your failure will be boring.
Because of the Internet, you're sort of forced to deal with people from very different backgrounds and beliefs. It's a great challenge of our time, and depending on when you ask me, I feel optimistic or pessimistic about it.
Studio execs were like, ''Lord of the Rings!' People want to see sword-and-dragon-type things!' No, people just want to see great stories. Hollywood always takes the wrong lesson from successes.
I never decided I wanted to be an actor. I just started doing standup because I love standup. Everything else has sort of been these tiny steps leading to this.
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 stay home. It's the best place to be alone. There is hardly any walk-through traffic.
A lot of people say video games can be stifling. Older people say, 'We had to go outside, and we had to make up stories!' For me, video games broadened my horizons. Playing 'Golden Axe,' I was those characters. I imagined myself being in that world, so honestly, it was a really good thing.
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.
When I started working on 'Michael And Michael,' it was my life for three to four months, and then suddenly it's gone.
I think, you know, a lot of the business of comedy is taking your personal experiences and making them relatable to other people.
One of my favorite comedies is 'Shaun of the Dead.'
I'd love to be in action movies. I've been trying to convince people. I don't think it's anything physical holding me back. I think it's a general vibe thing that's holding me back. I don't project action confidence, maybe.
I'm a massive rom-com head! Like, every rom-com in the '90s and early 2000s, I've watched.
When I was studying comedy in Chicago, it wasn't long after 9/11. There were a lot Middle Eastern comedians who were doing bits about hailing cabs and being terrorists. So the first two years, I didn't do any of that because I wanted to separate myself from those guys. But race is a big part of who I am, and it should be a big part of my comedy.
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.
I would say I try to make my comedy really personal. I try to tell stories that happened to me, experiences from my life.
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.
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 used to like to come up with inventions because I hated working so much when I had my day job. I thought, 'All I need is a great idea, and I'm out of here.'
I always felt that it was never the duty of a person to really stand up for their gender or their race or anything like that - I always felt that was a personal choice. But I do feel now that maybe my opinion is evolving or changing a little bit.
I moved to New York first and was really apprehensive about moving to L.A., but I really, really like it.
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.
I remember my jaw would hurt because I wasn't used to speaking English all the time. Like how, even if you exercise, you'll play kickball one day, and then you're like, 'Wait, I run, but new places are hurting because I don't use my muscles this way.' My mouth was not used to making these sounds.
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 started a podcast about 'X-Files' and ended up on it. Then I started a podcast about video games, and I'm in the new 'Mass Effect' game. I have to pick the stuff I love and do a podcast on it.
I started doing standup because of Hugh Grant's best-man speech in 'Four Weddings,' which is basically a standup routine.
I have a reward-and-punishment system: If I have done this much work, then I can play video games this long. It gives my day structure.
I was actually looking at the poster for 'Tarzan,' and I was thinking how abs look so different now. These are not your grandma's abs. They go so deep and so sharp now.
Think about when you were 12 or 13. The stuff I watched was awful! I tried to watch a 'He-Man' cartoon recently, and I was like, 'Oh my God!' I just had, like, a small brain. I was stupid.
If you do a sketch, that's a very short narrative. Stand-up, it's bit-to-bit, minute-long narratives.
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.
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.
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.
'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 grew up watching 'Ghostbusters' and 'Knight Rider' and Hot Wheels commercials. When I got to college, having never set foot in America, I knew more American pop-culture references than my friends did.
I want to be so famous that I'm the pop-culture reference that people would make to try and be racist to me. So I'd be walking down the street, and someone would be, like, 'Hey, look at this Kumail Nanjiani.'
I don't go, 'It is now time to change Americans' perception of Muslims. It's going to be a long day.' I think you just try to be unique and try to be yourself, and if something good comes of that, then great.
I've always played some version of a nerdy guy or something like that. I mean, one of my story lines on 'Silicon Valley' is that I am very bad with women!
