A Quote by Hasan Minhaj

On 'The Daily Show,' we get so caught up in the day-to-day news cycle. A story breaks, and then the piranhas in late night, we all jump to the headline, and we dissect it, and then we have to move on to the next day.
One of the things that I was kind of holding on to from 'The Daily Show' was there was an exhaustion that I would feel because we just kind of got caught up in the news cycle. You tell a story, and that's an interesting story, and then the next day we have to drop it and talk about something else. That's so unfair to the story and the people.
I go on the road all the time, but I'm only performing for two hours a night, and then I'll do a meet-and-greet, and then I'll get a bite to eat, get drunk, pass out, wake up the next day, sleeping the next day, sleeping off the hangover, and then I'm in the next city.
Say you have a headline like "Mountain Bike Stolen," and then you read the story, read another story about it the next day, and then the next week, and then the next year. News is a process of expansion, the filling in of detail, and making narrative connections - not based on chronology, but based on features of the story. There are narrative connections made between props, between characters, between situations, and so forth.
My work is very dear to me, and certainly I have had all the emotional highs and lows that go with trying to get it to an audience. But I do have some kind of detachment that seems somewhat unusual in my trade. I'm a writer who writes every day. I don't have a period of months where I can't get anything done and I wander around tearing my hair out. When I come back from a book tour, for instance, I might have one day where I sleep late and then check my e-mail, and then go for a walk, and then the next day I'm really itching to get back at writing a story.
One day for dinner I'll have fish, then the next day chicken, and then I'll have steak. I just try to mix it up all the time. I don't eat the same thing every day.
While I have historically been a late worker, you know, sometimes I even like to get up early and see what's happened in the few hours of the night and then I often take a nap in the middle of the day just to sort of make up for stretching my day out.
When I was ten years old, I would get up at 5 in the morning, cycle to the swimming baths, do an hour-and-a-half session, then cycle to school, do a day at school, then cycle back to the baths after.
Whatever news we get about the scans, I’m not going to die when we hear it. I won’t die the next day, or the day after that, or the day after that. So today, right now, well this is a wonderful day. And I want you to know how much I’m enjoying it.” I thought about that, and about Jai’s smile. I knew then. That’s the way the rest of my life would need to be lived.
I hung out a lot with the ring crew guys. I got along better with them then I did the other guys, the other talent. The guys that show up early in the morning and set the ring up and stay there all day and then take the ring down and drive five and six hours that night to get to the next show.
I could have been in a house show the day before being flown in to do the Survivor Series. I'd do that pay-per-view, then fly out the next day to go do another house show. The pay-per-view just happened in the middle of a 30 or 40-day road tour. For us back then, the WWF talent, it was just another day of work, another day of being on the road.
I've never seen a schedule where you just go in two hours almost every day of the week and then all day on one day. Then you shoot it at night with an audience and you're out of there.
The first time I was in the ring, I wasn't good at it, and I honestly thought, 'Maybe this isn't for me.' Then I went back the next day and the next day and the next day... because I loved it more than anything.
I memorize my lines and I show up. I think it's just instinctual, and sometimes it's wrong and the director says, "No, do it this way." And then I can change, because I didn't spend all night practicing it this one way. All I do to get ready for the day is the night before, I read my lines once or twice, memorize them, and then I show up.
I remember there was days when I would do six, seven countries in a day, you'd just be flying around and I'd get up in the morning and not know what I was doing. In one day I'd fly to Belgium and then off to Sweden and then do a gig in Leeds, I literally didn't know what I was doing from day to day.
Have you not done tormenting me with your accursed time! It's abominable! When! When! One day, is that not enough for you, one day he went dumb, one day I went blind, one day we'll go deaf, one day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second, is that not enough for you? They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more.
I get up late, have an espresso, and immediately start work. I try to get roughly caught up on email before I leave the house, then if I need to write anything or review a complex deal, I do that, and then I head to the office and work on my top few priorities for the day. I try to schedule my meetings in the afternoon.
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