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?'

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.

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.

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.

When you're a standup comic, you get up and you try stuff, and you're always kind of seeing how far you can push things.

An artist's job is simply to take the mirror in front of your face and hold it there. It's not to give you any answers. It is simply to take that mirror and point it at you.