I never consciously got into comedy. It was sort of one of those things where I was a theater student, I was acting, I was doing comedy, I was doing dramatic stuff, so it’s been something that I’ve always done and enjoyed doing and had an instinct to be relatively good at.
AASIF MANDVIPeople 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.
More Aasif Mandvi Quotes
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I think that hijacks the spirituality and beauty that exists within Islam. I believe in allowing Islam to be seen in context and in its entirety and being judged on what it really is, not what you think it is.
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I think family dynamics are definitely very interesting. And in my case my sister did get married. She gave my parents a grandchild.
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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.
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For anybody who’s ever been on the other end of, like, racial violence logic is not something that can be used.
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I said we are Ghodratis and there’s nothing that Ghodratis like more than a bargain.
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It 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?
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We are Muslims. My father would pawn off his Muslim in-laws as Hindus just so that he could get free pancakes.
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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.
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I think politicians and comedians have a lot in common. One is a group of approval-seeking narcissists who will say and do anything to be liked… and comedians are always talking about politics.
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If people invited Muslims into their home every week by way of a TV show would go a long way to making people feel comfortable with Muslims and countering misconceptions about who we are. Plus, of course, that will make it easier for us to impose sharia law across America.
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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.
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I’ve always said I’m the worst representative of Muslim-Americans that’s ever existed, because I’ve been inside more bars than mosques.
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I don’t want to tell people what they should think.
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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.
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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.
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