Kumail Nanjiani Quotes
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I'm a massive rom-com head! Like, every rom-com in the '90s and early 2000s, I've watched.
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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.
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Nobody really knows what they're doing. Some are just better at pretending like they do.
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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.
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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.'
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I'm still trying to figure out how to have an adult relationship with my parents.
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If you do a sketch, that's a very short narrative. Stand-up, it's bit-to-bit, minute-long narratives.
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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.
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Most of my exposure to American pop culture was through this weird prism of 'Mad' magazine.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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My parents don't really understand my career. They don't really bring it up that much.
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I think, you know, a lot of the business of comedy is taking your personal experiences and making them relatable to other people.
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My mom told us never to reveal that we were Shia in school. You would find out that some other kid was Shiite, and you would whisper, 'Hey,' or you would see someone at the mosque, and you'd be like, 'Hey, that kid's Shiite!' There was a lot of tension, a lot of violence in Karachi between Shiites and Sunnis.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I didn't know if I could be funny on stage or write a joke. But I saw that there are no rules. If you're funny offstage, you can figure out a way to be funny onstage.
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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.'
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You just don't see Muslims being matter-of-fact Muslim. They're always defined by their Muslim-ness. We're either terrorists, or we're fighting terrorists. I remember seeing 'True Lies' and going, 'Why are we always the bad guys?'
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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.
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It happens to people. People ruin things they love! I'm sure the guy who played Jar Jar Binks loved 'Star Wars.'
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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.