I'm a big believer in doing everything you can and everything in your power to change the outcome. But health is one of those things you can't control, and it's a very scary thing for me.

I'm a huge fan of Beverly Cleary.

My biggest inspiration is black America and what they've done in the arts. I have always felt like an outsider in America, and what black Americans have done to add their chapter to this book called the American dream, and to be so unapologetic and true, and have added so much to art and culture in the world.

I think the best comedians have that bravery and courage to say, 'This is what it is. This is unfair; that's not cool.'

I think the way comedy is represented on screen is it's either all fart jokes - and it's just laughter for the sake of laughter - or it's one of those things where it's just kind of very preachy, very heavy-handed.

'Stand-Up Planet' was Anthony Bourdain-meets-stand-up comedy.

Donald Trump is an extremist leader who came out of nowhere. He's self-financed, recruits through social media, attracts his followers with a radical ideology to take over the world, and is actively trying to promote a war between Islam and the West.

Donald Trump is white ISIS - WISIS.

Comedy is very disarming. It's a way to talk about things and still be light-hearted. And when it's done really well, you never see the strings, whereas when you watch an infomercial or a politician speaking, a lot of times you can see the strings, you can see what agenda they're trying to push.

If you and I believe two different things, I can attack you verbally all day, but if I can make you laugh and show you the absurdity of your argument, it will lower you guard. People let you in then.

I'm just an American citizen like everyone else and I'm not sitting at the power table in the room where it all happens.

America's unique ability to change and be super flexible is pretty dope, man. It's pretty incredible. And that's what I want to contribute to.

There are definitely some set topics I go onstage with and want to talk about, but there's also an element of improvisation and spontaneity that I like to bring to each performance and talk about uniquely in that room.

Bananas are my go-to breakfast.

I wanted to be Atticus Finch.

I went to college during the Kazaa/Napster era, and we had free Internet, which was a huge deal. People were just downloading all of everything.

The story that I'm telling in 'Homecoming King' about falling in love, these are things that happened to me - that actually happen every day in our backyards and in our communities.

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.

I exist in this hyphen. I'm an Indian-American-Muslim kid, but am I more Indian, or am I more American? What part of my identity am I?

One of the biggest things immigrant kids oftentimes feel is this big disparity between our parents and us. And our parents are staunch pragmatists, and I consider myself to be an optimist.

In high school, I didn't know what comedy was, but I was involved in speech and debate and public speaking.

I was good at speech and debate and academics. I should've stayed in my lane, but I kept trying out for the basketball team. I thought I would make the N.B.A.

I had been cut from the basketball team every year. But I was like, 'I can turn it around! Michael Jordan made it!' You see it a lot of times - you'll have an athlete that you love, and then they'll be like, 'I also want to rap,' and you're like, 'Don't do that.' I was that kid.

I think perspective is a necessary, amazing thing.

Personal narrative is one of the few things where people don't get caught up in fighting over esoteric rhetoric.

As satirists, we get to stand on the sidelines of life and comment on what's happening.

I just hope that people get a variety of news sources to keep themselves informed.

I grew up in a pretty strict household in the sense that we just didn't have cable, so I wasn't familiar with what stand-up comedy was. I remember telling my friends that I thought stand-up comedy was like the thing that happened before the episode of 'Seinfeld.'

My mom works at the VA; she's been working at the VA for 15 plus years, and yet she's helping so many veterans coming back from brown Muslim countries, and my mom treats them. It's this weird - sometimes I feel torn. It's this dual identity. I'm so proud to be American, and at the same time, I disagree with our foreign policy.

I just hope I reach out to people and connect to people in such a way that they continue to support what I do.

Trump's administration looks a great deal like those of the 1850s and the 1890s, with business and government so intertwined that they cannot be disentangled.

The Declaration of Independence promised citizens equal access to economic opportunity. This was the powerful principle for which men were willing to fight the American Revolution, but it was never codified in law. When the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution, they assumed that the country's vast resources would ensure equality of opportunity.

Special counsel Robert Mueller, investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election, provided ample evidence that the president should be investigated for obstruction of justice in his attempt to quell the Russia investigation by firing Comey and urging aides to lie.

The Treaty of Fort Laramie established most of what would later become South Dakota as a reservation, along with the Black Hills. But the treaty did not stop miners, buffalo hunters, railroad men, or settlers from intruding on Lakota lands.

Movement Conservatism was a fringe force from the 1950s until the 1980s, when voters elected Movement Conservative Ronald Reagan to the White House. But even then, their control of the Republican Party was not a given.

If Republican leaders are willing to enable Trump's autocratic enthusiasms in return for oligarchy, American democracy will die.

Republicans controlled the federal government for decades after the Civil War, and their policies funneled wealth upward -- with dire consequences. In 1893, the economy crashed, and too few Americans had enough purchasing power to revive it. Lincoln had been right: Government that served the wealthy would ruin the country.

If Congress allows the USPS to collapse and private companies take over the mail business, we can expect what we have seen with private internet providers: thorough service in urban areas that will turn a healthy profit, either none or very expensive service in rural areas.

Republicans turned against organized workers and abandoned the idea of promoting equality at the bottom of the economic scale. They turned their idea of economic harmony into a justification for supporting industrialists, who were the nation's job creators.

Abraham Lincoln and others recoiled from the idea of government as a prop for the rich. In organizing the Republican Party, they highlighted the equality of opportunity promised in the Declaration of Independence and warned that a healthy economy depended on widespread prosperity.

Since the 1980s, Republicans have argued that policies embraced by a majority of Americans to promote equality of opportunity actually infringe liberty by hampering businessmen's actions or taking their money through taxes.

For a generation, Republicans have tried to unravel the activist government under which Americans have lived since the 1930s, when Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt created a government that regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, and invested in infrastructure.

In contrast to them, Republicans argue, are minorities, organized workers, and women, who demand government policies that can only be paid for with tax dollars sucked from white men.

The same Republicans who had threatened to impeach Hillary Clinton remained silent when, immediately after his surprise victory, Trump refused to abide by laws about emoluments or nepotism, openly profiting from the presidency and filling the White House with personal relatives.

The only way to stop gaslighting is to shine the light of reality onto a situation. That makes it imperative for the perpetrator to keep victims in the dark.

In the 1960s, Movement Conservatives created a cast of villains. The Brown v. Board decision in 1954 and President Eisenhower's use of troops to desegregate Little Rock Central High School in 1957 enabled Movement Conservatives to resurrect old white fears that government activism was simply a way to funnel white tax dollars to African-Americans.

Prodded by the needs of the Union cause, the Republican Party created a strong national government that educated young men and gave them land to farm. Ultimately, the GOP abolished slavery, then gave freedmen the vote so they could protect their own economic interests.

The fantasy world of Movement Conservatives is no longer fringe talk. The leading candidates for the Republican presidential nomination embrace it. They are playing to a chorus of true believers, and they are preaching what that choir wants to hear. They are following the same pattern Eric Hoffer identified as the path to authoritarianism.

The government's job, according to modern Republicans, is not the protection of equal opportunity for all Americans, but rather the protection of male breadwinners.

The Republican approach to handling the coronavirus and the economy is apparently not to turn to our government, but to put our heads down, go on as usual, and hope for a vaccine.