Samantha Bee said to me when I first started on the “Daily Show”, she was like no – there is no – the only way you’ll learn this job is by doing this job.
AASIF MANDVIIt is ironic that it doesn’t matter how successful I am in any other capacity. Ultimately, my parents marker is do you have a wife? And do you have children?
More Aasif Mandvi Quotes
-
-
When my family decided to leave England I could not have been happier. I was sort of like – America seemed like the land of opportunity and, you know, it was Hollywood to me.
AASIF MANDVI -
I grew up on American pop culture so everything that I fantasized about to get out of this sort of humdrum world of Bradford was about America. So when we decided to move there I was on the plane.
AASIF MANDVI -
England has an interesting relationship with the Indian subcontinent because the years of colonization and the history between the two places.
AASIF MANDVI -
Indian culture is essentially much more of a we culture. It’s a communal culture where you do what’s best for the community – you procreate.
AASIF MANDVI -
Because to Americans, Chechnya might as well be a suburb of Narnia.
AASIF MANDVI -
Comedy can reach many more people than, say, a serious lecture on the topic. And comedy might just be the access point to reach people who want to be entertained and also learn something.
AASIF MANDVI -
Re-colonizing it and sort of reverse-colonizing it to the point that today the national dish of Great Britain is Chicken Tikka Masala.
AASIF MANDVI -
I thought [when I was 16] my days were just going to be spent hanging out on a beach and my girlfriend was going to be Miss Teen USA and my best friend will be a dolphin.
AASIF MANDVI -
I’m not really a food connoisseur.
AASIF MANDVI -
North Carolina precinct chairman and GOP executive committee member Don Yelton thinks his state’s new voting restrictions are just fine.
AASIF MANDVI -
Paki- bashing was kind of this term that was used in general to beat up anyone that was from the Indian subcontinent.
AASIF MANDVI -
In Britain, you never get away from the fact that you’re a foreigner. In the U.S., the view is it doesn’t matter where you come from.
AASIF MANDVI -
The idea that I had anything to do with speaking about Islam or about the Muslim world was just absurd to my family. … I hadn’t been to the mosque in like 10 years.
AASIF MANDVI -
You do find a lot of your time in the West kind of searching for your place in the world – your voice, your identity, like, who am I? Like, what is my reason for being here, you know? And in that same way who am I to be partnered with, you know?
AASIF MANDVI -
Now the bigots have to get creative. Good luck coming up with slurs for Chechens. Go back where you came from, Ushanka head.
AASIF MANDVI -
From my parent’s generation the idea was not that marriage was about some kind of idealized, romantic love. It was a partnership. It’s about creating family. It’s about creating offspring.
AASIF MANDVI -
The experience of being on a show that is very much in the center of popular culture is exciting. You really feel like you’re reaching people.
AASIF MANDVI -
I think you had the GOP down there in North Carolina reaching out to African-American voters and this guy coming on television and using the N-word and saying what Don Yelton said.
AASIF MANDVI -
I’m Muslim the way many of my Jewish friends are Jewish: I avoid pork, and I take the big holidays off.
AASIF MANDVI -
Getting chased home from the bus stop after school by English kids, boarding school, being targeted for praying to what they call Allah wallah ding dong.
AASIF MANDVI -
I think I discovered my first, you know, my first image of a naked woman was sort of sneaking a peek at one of those magazines that was in my dad’s store.
AASIF MANDVI -
People lament that there’s no roles being written for South Asian or Muslim characters. But their parents don’t want their children to go into the entertainment field. You don’t get it both ways.
AASIF MANDVI -
I was a fan of “The Daily Show” I watched it,I never imagined being on it, but I figured I would just go down there and do my best Stephen Colbert impression.
AASIF MANDVI -
The great joy of doing ‘The Daily Show’ for me is that I get to sit on the fence between cultures. I am commenting on the absurdity of both sides as an outsider and insider. Sometimes I’m playing the brown guy, and sometimes I’m not, but the best stuff I do always goes back to being a brown kid in a white world.
AASIF MANDVI -
Of course the law’s not racist.
AASIF MANDVI -
I think family dynamics are definitely very interesting. And in my case my sister did get married. She gave my parents a grandchild.
AASIF MANDVI