Quotes from Michael Che

If you're honest about things, people will trust you, even if you're a bad guy. That says something about where we are and who we are as people.

Some things hit close to home with people, and it's going to be hard to tell someone who lost somebody on 9/11 that a 9/11 joke is funny.

I think when you first get a job, you're just trying to do what the last regime did, just to keep it going, as opposed to actually doing what you want to do.

If I think something's funny, I try to mold it into a joke as soon as possible. Once I have a joke, I say it a million different ways on stage until I find a rhythm and it feels like it's as good as it can be.

I'm lucky enough to have two different platforms to perform on - I do stand-up comedy, and I have 'SNL.' That's where I make my most controversial statements because I can explain myself and I'm in control of the microphone, as opposed to Twitter, where it's in the hands of the reader.

I follow a lot of news outlets on Twitter, so I'll just go skim through the headlines and see what's going on.

I would love to do more TV and do movies for the experience, but my ultimate focus is stand-up. It's the number one thing that I love most because there is nothing like being with a live audience.

My uncle is a martial artist, and in the early '80s, he made a kung fu flick with director Charlie Ahearn.

It's a unique fraternity to be a standup. I think everybody understands, you know, opportunity, and everybody - especially at the top - are genuinely rooting for you.

I'm from New York, and I started in New York, which I think is a huge advantage because I wasn't overwhelmed by the city. I understood the city. All of the distractions that could come with somebody that started comedy in New York didn't really happen for me.

I feel like most standup comedians do it the way I did it, where you just go to open mics and cut your teeth. Sketch and improv - they take a lot of classes. It's not unusual, the way I did it. It's just that, with standup, no one knows how to start because there's no book for it; there's no place you can really go.

I'm a huge Steven Martin fan.

In comedy you work with people so often that they just become familiar faces - it's like a fraternity.

When you're doing comedy constantly, you're organized: you know where everything is, you know how to get out of it, you know how to stretch it. But, like, doing 'SNL,' I stopped doing spots, and then I would finally do some sets - it take me so long to, kind of, get in the rhythm of it.

Black people have, like, this thing, and I have it, we all have it, we have this kind of embarrassment. Where we don't like white people to find out our little insecurities and out little quirks. We don't really like that that much. It's kind of, we're like, 'Don't let them know - that ours; that's for us.'

Comedy's my outlet for my ridiculous emotions.

When you grow up in the city, New York is so big that you can kind of stay in your own little corner of the city and think that that's it because you don't need anything. You don't have to venture out; you don't have to touch the boroughs. You can kind of stay in your neighborhood, and there's everything there.

Live comedy is fantastic. It's when live comedy is transcribed and reported and critiqued outside of the venue without context that things become complicated.

I can't speak for every American comic, but for me, a great show is its own reward. Comedy is too subjective for awards.

Comedy is subjective.

I can tell how honest a joke is or how true a joke is by how fast the laughs come.

That's my only goal: Stay off crack.