It wasn't until I moved to New York that I decided to make a conscious effort to be myself.

Im from a family of doctors, and I think they really wanted me to be a doctor. I even sort of assumed I would be a doctor.

I think, you know, a lot of the business of comedy is taking your personal experiences and making them relatable to other people.

It really helped to have someone whose taste I really trusted who I knew was really smart and a really good writer. Sometimes I find it hard to judge my own work so it was good to have someone who could look at it. It was like, "Oh, she likes it, then it's good."

The plan was always to come to America, because Pakistan's a scary place. They don't have religious freedom. It's very poor, and there's a lot of violence and corruption.

I was extremely shy and had a terrible fear of public speaking. But I had fallen in love with stand-up.

Philosophy is problem-solving. There's a philosophical problem, and then you try to solve it by approaching it from different angles and seeing what way works. That's what comedy is: you have a topic and you try to just hit it as many different ways as you can.