Hasan Minhaj

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.

I love air conditioning and Starbucks.

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

When you can tailor your act, you want it to be about yourself but also about the people in the room and the experience you guys are having in that moment; it is really a special thing.

It is 2017, and we are living in the golden age of lying.

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.'

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.

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

Political culture has become popular culture.

When you grow up as a minority in a majority culture, a lot of times, you're just trying to fit in.

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.'