Explore Quotes by Aasif Mandvi

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.

I never consciously got into comedy. It was sort of one of those things where I was a theater student, I was acting, I was doing comedy, I was doing dramatic stuff, so it's been something that I've always done and enjoyed doing and had an instinct to be relatively good at.

Traditional television as we have known it will make love to the Internet and have a child. That child will be the future. It's already happening, and it's hot!

In America, people think being South Asian is still kind of exotic. When you go outside New York and Chicago and L.A., there are people who have never tried Indian food... they've never even tasted it!

I'm a little bit like a turducken: I'm sort of like an Indian person, wrapped in a British person, wrapped in an American kind of thing.

I did a play called 'Disgraced' in 2012 at Lincoln Center, which ultimately won the Pulitzer Prize. I played the lead character, a Muslim American, who had renounced Islam and became very anti-Islam.

You can talk about and think about Muslims as you want, but you can't stop Muslims from building a mosque. You can hate Muslims from the comfort of your house or publicly, but when that becomes stopping Muslims from building a mosque or worshipping, then we are crossing the line into something else.

I always used to watch 'The Daily Show,' and there were all these comedic geniuses there. I didn't know if I was going to be hired full time or not. At the beginning, I was sort of hired as a part time, on and off guy. When I first got hired - it was August 2006 - and I was working on and off, and they'd call me whenever.

I always focused on being an actor. I did stand-up briefly, but I also did a lot of dramatic work. But since I've been on 'The Daily Show,' people think I'm a comedian. That's not how I see myself.

I'm free to see things objectively because I don't consider myself American, and I don't consider myself British or Indian. I'm kind of an amalgam or mongrel of a lot of different places and experiences. In a lot of ways it's been a good thing for me. It's enabled me to do what I do on 'The Daily Show.'

I was born in Mumbai, but I grew up in England, and then my adulthood has been in the States. I'm an American stuffed with an English person with an Indian person inside. I feel like those things kind of inform me in some way, which I think helps me as an actor.

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.

'Halal in the Family' will expose a broad audience to some of the realities of being Muslim in America. By using satire, we will encourage people to reconsider their assumptions about Muslims, while providing a balm to those experiencing anti-Muslim bias. I also hope those Uncles and Aunties out there will crack a smile!

My tenure at 'The Daily Show' started during the decade after September 11, and fear of Muslims was at an all-time high. Politicians and the media seemed to dial the fright, mistrust, and animosity up to a fever pitch to gain votes and ratings.

I figure if people don't want to make the distinction between a Muslim and a terrorist, then why should I make a distinction between good scared white people and racists?

One of the first auditions I had in New York was for a commercial where I had to go in and audition to be a snake charmer... It was either some bank commercial or something where they wanted a guy charming a snake... I remember they wanted to know if I actually knew how to snake charm.

I'm Muslim the way many of my Jewish friends are Jewish: I avoid pork, and I take the big holidays off.

I'm not really a food connoisseur.

The experience of being on a show that is very much in the center of popular culture is exciting. You really feel like you're reaching people.

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.

The artist never really has any control over the impact of his work. If he starts thinking about the impact of his work, then he becomes a lesser artist.