MICHAEL CHE

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

I don't know how you can do comedy once every two weeks. Ever since I started, if I'm off for three days, I got to learn how to do comedy again.

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

If I could work with Eddie Murphy on 'SNL,' I think I could quit comedy forever. For me and my generation, he's God.

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.'

Cartoon violence is something very vivid and dark but made palatable for children in a fun way. That's the kind of comedy I do - I try to take subjects that might seem deep and make them as silly as possible.

I have six brothers and sisters. My mother has six kids from two different marriages. And we would just sit around making fun of each other's dad, and all our dads had real problems.

I like comedy that's not political but social, dealing with issues of people talking to each other. No matter what your politics, we still have to live with each other. Politics is taking a side. I'm not running for office, you know?

I think satire suffered under Obama, but not because of Obama. People are more sensitive now than ever, and strong satirical voices are stifled because of that. I don't think a Clinton presidency would change that.

I used to paint pictures - what happened was, I used to draw and paint pictures. And some of my friends would be, like, 'Yo, you should put that on a T-shirt,' because that's where their brain would go.

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.

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'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'm not saying I shouldn't have to pay any taxes, but I shouldn't have to pay as many as somebody that votes. I don't vote because I don't know anything about politics. And honestly, I can't believe they'd let me. Isn't that an important thing? They'll just let me pick the president! I don't gotta know anything!

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.

If I'm doing a show on Sunday at 7 P.M., that wouldn't be the same show that I'd do at 11 P.M. on a Saturday - it's a different room at a different time of day with different sensibilities. That doesn't mean you have to compromise your art, but it is communication: you have to know how to talk to people.

Improv classes were too expensive, so I just started going to open mics. And the day I did it, I did, like, three because I just loved it so much. It was so much fun. And it wasn't good, it was just fun to do. It felt like a release.

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.

It's true - my mother kicked me out the house at 14. I had to go live with my sister. I had some problems. I was very rebellious as a kid. I don't even know why or where it came from, but I had a lot of anger. Me and my mom clashed a lot because she didn't tolerate that, as she shouldn't from a 14-year-old.

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.

Watching someone getting really angry can be very funny - if it doesn't affect you, you can laugh at it, and the sillier the thing he's angry about, the funnier it is. All these emotions, we have them naturally; we're not taught them, so they can't be all wrong. We have to find some outlet for them. 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.

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.

Your number one job as a comedian is to be aware. You're supposed to understand the temperature in the room more than anyone on the planet - that's the whole craft of comedy.

I'm a huge Steven Martin fan.