Top 90 Quotes & Sayings by Kumail Nanjiani
Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Pakistani comedian Kumail Nanjiani.
Last updated on April 19, 2025.
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.
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?
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.
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.
I love, love, love the street-cart food. Gyros are like a meat-flavored fruit roll-up. A meat roll-up.
It happens to people. People ruin things they love! I'm sure the guy who played Jar Jar Binks loved 'Star Wars.'
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.
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 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.
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.
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 don't want to generalize, but the target audience for a lot of the YouTube people is fairly young - under the age of 16. You still want to know what those people are watching, because I think it's interesting, but sometimes it just makes you feel old.
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 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'm still trying to figure out how to have an adult relationship with my parents.
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.
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'm a massive rom-com head! Like, every rom-com in the '90s and early 2000s, I've watched.
I know what is funny coming out of my mouth and what is not funny coming out of my mouth. You have to figure out, What is the joke that I can do that nobody else can do?
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.
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.
Most of my exposure to American pop culture was through this weird prism of 'Mad' magazine.
'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.
TV requires a lot more patience. No one's ever like, 'I gotta get up at 5 A.M. and write my stand-up!' It's an easy life. With 'Silicon Valley,' it's long hours and very unglamorous.
You can go slow. Allow your dreams and goals to change, but live an intentional life.
Nobody really knows what they're doing. Some are just better at pretending like they do.
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 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 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.
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.
Stand-up is successful if they laugh. It's unsuccessful if they don't laugh.
Populate your life with people different from you. Once you leave school, you get to choose the kinds of people you're going to be around rather than forced to be around them.
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!
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.
If you do a sketch, that's a very short narrative. Stand-up, it's bit-to-bit, minute-long narratives.
I loved the Oscars, and I had V.H.S. tapes for the Oscars, and I used to watch them over and over. There was probably one year where I watched it, like, 20 times or something.
I think, you know, a lot of the business of comedy is taking your personal experiences and making them relatable to other people.
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 started doing standup because of Hugh Grant's best-man speech in 'Four Weddings,' which is basically a standup routine.
I moved to New York first and was really apprehensive about moving to L.A., but I really, really like it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
I just hope that there's a market for somebody who looks like me as the lead of a rom-com, you know?
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.
I'll tell you, nobody was more excited than me, in the entire world, that there is a 'Silicon Valley' Funko set.
I know a lot of brown actors who play terrorists because they're physically intimidating. For me, it was like, 'O.K., you'll be the nerd.' So I've played the nerd. I've played food-delivery guys. But I always tried to find something in the characters so that they weren't just defined by what they looked like.
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.
When I started working on 'Michael And Michael,' it was my life for three to four months, and then suddenly it's gone.
A lot of times, it seems like social media has devolved into people just yelling at each other and not really conversing.
Being a fish out of water is tough, but that's how you evolve.
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?'
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.
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.
One of my favorite comedies is 'Shaun of the Dead.'
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