Kumail Nanjiani quotes:

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.

Just because you saw a vampire doesn't mean that a snowman or a Loch Ness Monster also exists.

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.

I was extremely shy and had a terrible fear of public speaking. But I had fallen in love with stand-up.

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 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 approximated the Black Friday experience at home by hurling myself into a wall a number of times and then ordering online.

I love constructive criticism. I love getting notes when I'm acting. I love them telling me what to do. I don't always agree with it, but I really need it.

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.

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. Its specific hours set aside every day for certain things.

The whole religion of Islam is based on reward and punishment and reward and punishment, and it becomes a part of how you think of everything. Even yourself.

Stand-up is successful if they laugh. It's unsuccessful if they don't laugh.

I was on this path to becoming a computer-science guy, but I didn't like it. I got no joy from it. It was very, very scary. It was suffocating to think that I was just going to do this thing for the rest of my life.

I think, you know, a lot of the business of comedy is taking your personal experiences and making them relatable to other people.

I think being funny had something to do with feeling like an outsider, not feeling cool - insecurity.

I thought of America as this crazy, happy, exciting place where everybody's rich and there's stuff everywhere. Compared to Pakistan, it's not untrue.

It wasn't until I moved to New York that I decided to make a conscious effort to be myself.

It's not like I listened to music and then stopped. I still don't have a real appreciation for music because I didn't really start listening to it until my 20s.

Living in Pakistan, you didn't have a sense of how huge and varied America was, geographically.

The plan was always to come to America, because Pakistan's a scary place. They don't have religious freedom. It's very poor, and there's a lot of violence and corruption.

I stay home. It's the best place to be alone. There is hardly any walk-through traffic.

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 moved to New York first and was really apprehensive about moving to L.A., but I really, really like it.

I am a very nerdy guy. I understand that it's easier to cast me as a nerdy guy than an action star - although I would love to be an action star!

I love, love, love the street-cart food. Gyros are like a meat-flavored fruit roll-up. A meat roll-up.

I would say I try to make my comedy really personal. I try to tell stories that happened to me, experiences from my life.

Im 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.

My stories take three or four months to fix, and it's not magical of a process. Ultimately it's a boring, difficult process. I write everything out, and then the parts I think are funny I put in bold. Then I go perform it. Then the parts that aren't funny, I unbold them.

On stage I just have to be myself. In acting you have to be so many other people.

Philosophy is problem-solving. There's a philosophical problem, and then you try to solve it by approaching it from different angles and seeing what way works. That's what comedy is: you have a topic and you try to just hit it as many different ways as you can.

We only hear success stories. You don't hear about the hundreds and hundreds - the overwhelming majority that don't go anywhere. This is a more realistic portrayal of what happens in startups.