HASAN MINHAJ

Aditi is a comedy superstar over in India. She's only one of three female English-speaking comedians in India.

I had a huge Indian wedding, and I did it for my wife, and I did it for my white friends.

I'm addicted to chocolate chip cookies. I mean that seriously. If there are chocolate chip cookies, I will devour them.

J. Cole's 2014 'Forrest Hills Drive.' The album, artwork, and director of that album was a huge influence on the visuals for 'Homecoming King.'

'Shantaram' is fantastic. An Australian prisoner escapes & joins the mafia in India? Sign me up. I love stuff that is based on true stories.

The movies 'Dope' and 'Straight Outta Compton' blew me away. I love seeing directors and writers of color make amazing slices of pop culture.

There's all sorts of terrible things that happen around the world. And comedy's one of those few things where you can discuss those things.

Growing up in the States, there's this part of me that's like, man, I'm Indian. Like, this is where I belong. And as soon as I got to India, and I had to go to the bathroom in some places, I was, like, 'Man - I am American.'

I've found the 90-10 rule to be pretty true: 90 percent of what I come up with and write down is kinda 'eh,' and then somehow, someway, 10 percent of it happens to work out really great in my act.

I've learned to start from a really sound argument, boil down the essence of what you're trying to say, then build your humor around that, rather than starting with, 'This sounds funny,' and going from there.

If you want a great replacement, like, who can follow Barack and still have that swag, that charisma, that charm and be historic - I think it would be Tina Fey for president.

One thing I found very interesting about comedians around the world was their knowledge of stuff outside of their own culture and comfort zone. That's not very common in the States. We produce our own soft power, which is pop culture, but we rarely try to absorb and learn information from other cultures and countries.

The traditional Hollywood system is pretty rigid, but the film scene in, say, South Africa is booming with a lot of possibilities. If you have the cameras and reasonable capital, you can put your film in theatres next to 'Guardians of the Galaxy.' A great example of that was Kagiso Lediga's film 'Blitz Patrole.'

To show that a comedian on stage in India talking about sanitation or in South Africa talking about HIV and AIDS awareness, if you follow the joke into their lives, you can see that, like, oh, these things aren't just contrived in joke books. This is real life. I think the best comedians have that bravery and courage to say, Oh, this is what it is.

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.

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.

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.

When you have friends that are Muslim, Jewish, gay, from any marginalized group, you realize that they are so much more than this esoteric talking point.

The 'Homecoming King' show started off as a storytelling show that I had done; I worked with Greg Walloch to develop it and build it into something bigger.

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?

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

I'd rather be an angry optimist than an angry nihilist.

Donald Trump is liar-in-chief.

Every time Trump goes golfing, the headline should read, 'Trump Goes Golfing. Apocalypse Delayed.'

Racism has a very quick expiration date when exposed to actual contact with people.