It's hard to mix with a crowd when you're walking down the hallway and everybody else is a foot shorter. I remember hanging out with my friends, like at the mall, and thinking people were staring at me and talking about me. It made me turn inside myself. I became more shy and quiet.
When I work, I like to just kind of stay quiet, stay to myself. I like to walk around a lot and figure out what's gonna happen in the scene and try to get my head straight.
I have really fond memories of growing up in Chicago, and I always love going back. I still have a lot of really good friends from high school that I go to dinner with. It's kind of become a tradition when I go out there to do a show to give a few friends a call, tell some funny stories about high school and walk down memory lane.
My favorite thing is to have a big dinner with friends and talk about life.
I grew up in a very westernised environment and went to a private American school. But my personality was shy and quiet, and I wanted to wear the hijab but didn't have the courage, as I knew my friends would talk me out of it.
I still sweat bullets if I go on The Tonight Show, but I tell myself, You can either have fun tonight or you can be shy and miserable. You ask my friends or anyone I work with now - nobody would say I was shy.
Walk that walk and go forward all the time. Don't just talk that talk, walk it and go forward. Also, the walk didn't have to be long strides; baby steps counted too. Go forward.
People always say I'm shy! But I'm not even shy! Like, if you knew what I'm saying in my brain. I'm in my own mind a lot. Even though I'm quiet I'm thinking about a lot of things.
I like to wear dresses and skirts when I go onstage because the attitude that I have is, 'I'm so excited to introduce myself to you.' And I want to be wearing what I'd be wearing to a date or a dinner party.
I've learned to try to sustain myself by holding on to the integrity of who I am. I'm not talking big diva. I'm quiet. I'm shy. And I became stronger when I stopped trying to be the person they wanted me to be.
It's a crazy feeling you know, being a young kid from New York, seeing everybody talk about Jordan, everybody wearing Jordan. Then to being up close and personal with him, eating dinner with him, and to be a part of his family.
When I was 17, I was so shy I could barely speak or introduce myself to anyone.
I'm just gonna talk about being Nigerian-American. I'm gonna talk about being single. I'm gonna talk about what happened to me on the train today. I'm gonna talk about so many other things that, as a comic, you're able to talk about because you see the world in sarcasm.
I'm not a type of grandmother sitting in a rocking chair. I'm a lot in the theater. I'm a lot at concerts. I'm a lot at friends.' I like to go out for dinner. I don't have to be home one night a week if I don't want to.
In high school, I was lucky enough to have a big group of girlfriends that have really inspired a lot of the stories in my books. I'm still close with my friends from that time, so it's never very hard to put myself back into that place, that voice.
My favorite thing in the world is to have just a big dinner with friends and just sit and talk about their life and their difficulties and all of that.