I got a lot of support from my parents. That's the one thing I always appreciated. They didn't tell me I was being stupid; they told me I was being funny.
People are apprehensive about finding 'The Leftovers' funny because it's such a dark circumstance, but I think, really, what the show is about is examining how different people deal with loss. There are elements of humour and levity and irony in that... just like in real life.
My friend and I founded the New York Arab-American Comedy Festival to counter the negative images of Arabs in media. And we always made sure that the comedy came first. So we weren't a bunch of Arabs trying to be funny. We were a bunch of comedians who just happened to be of Arab heritage.
What am I responsible for? Who am I responsible to? Everybody? How come when Archie Bunker nailed everybody, it was funny - but when I do it, it's not?
No matter how popular you are as a stand-up - you can go out and fill a 10,000-seat arena and be smart and funny - it's delicate to host an awards show and know where your place is and know that it's not about you, that it's about the people who are nominated, and respect that, but at the same time have your moment to show them who you are.
I grew up in a bit of a vacuum. And as a kid, you see 'Monty Python's Flying Circus' and you're like, 'Oh, it's a cartoon.' There's mixed media. It's funny, and there's stop-motion. But as an adult, you figure it out, how the entire underpinnings of their comedy was poking fun at the rank and file of the British aristocracy and the monarchy.
It was a JOB; the video show was a JOB; you don't tell the Aristocrats joke at 8 o'clock at night on network tv, it would be funny though. But those guys know I like dirty stuff, I like clean stuff too.
I do keep getting these bad girl roles. The funny thing is that, honestly, I don't think I'm believable as these aristocratic mean girls. But I do love playing them.
The men I idolized built their bodies and became somebody - like Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger - and I thought, 'That can be me.' So I started working out. The funny thing is I didn't realize back then that I was having a defining moment.
The chief function of the body is to carry the brain around.
It's funny how we 'do' Christmas. Christmas is not something that we do, it is something that was done. It celebrates the long awaited arrival of the Messiah, Jesus Christ. We had nothing to do with it, but what we can do is praise God for the coming of the Lord, who washed away the sins of the world by dying on the cross.
I got to dress up in funny clothes and run around New Zealand with a bow and arrow for 18 months, how bad could that be?
I don't know why we, in the art world, cannot unpack things and sort of make hybrid notions of a practice. We're very rigid. It's funny, though; in music, we have no problem sampling, mixing and remixing. But in the art world, why can't we take little parts of history and mix it together?
People use the guise of art, and artistic expression, to do all kinds of hateful things. It's like Trump and everybody else using the guise of humor to say hateful things, the excuse being, 'I was just being funny.'
We want to ascribe a kind of tragic grimness to people, but people are funny.
The prospects for a coherent, hilarious and consistent American comedy seem to lessen every year, as the poor waterlogged, gassy corpse called 'Evan Almighty' proved when it floated ashore recently. So there's a temptation to think too highly of Robin Williams's uneven but occasionally funny 'License to Wed.'
Latinos, Asians, African-Americans, women - we're all trying to find our place in this world of cinema and television and theater. And the great thing with comedy is that most of the time, you could be orange. It doesn't matter, as long you're funny.
I know that I'm going to die and that you're going to die. I can't do anything about that. But I can explore it through a metaphor and make a kind of funny, dark story about it, and in doing so, really exhaust and research as many aspects of it as I can imagine. And in a way, that does give me some closure.
My mum passing away wasn't funny, but that funeral and what I went through, the things that happened, looking back at it, there were funny moments. You have to be strong enough to look back at it, to sit and assess the situation.
There is a saying that if you get something for free, you should know that you're the product. It was never more true than in the case of Facebook and Gmail and YouTube. You get free social-media services, and you get free funny cat videos. In exchange, you give up the most valuable asset you have, which is your personal data.
