Julio Torres is obsessed with shapes. So much so that the up-and-coming comedian and Saturday Night Live writer created an entire stand-up show called—you guessed it—“My Favorite Shapes,” dedicated to showcasing tiny trinkets and bizarre objects that he likes. “It’s basically like when you talk to your nieces or nephews and they're showing you a toy telling you what it does and what they're thinking,” he says. This is Julio Torres in his element—taking the micro and making it more.

Torres has an acute ability to draw out the hilarity of the seemingly banal. Say, for example, writing an entire sketch centered on the Papyrus font used in the Avatar movie logo. It’s what makes Torres one of the freshest and most unique voices in comedy right now. You may recognize the millennial stand-up from his appearances as a twisted, Jimmy Fallon-breaking correspondent on The Tonight Show, but you’re probably most familiar with his work behind the scenes at Saturday Night Live. In his less than two years on the show, Torres has written his fair share of viral hits including the brilliant aforementioned “Papyrus” short in which a tormented Ryan Gosling tracks down Avatar director James Cameron to air his grievances over the movie’s title font, and the much-heralded commercial parody “Wells for Boys,” which imagines a Fisher-Price well playset for kids who “want to be understood.”

We caught up with Torres during the show’s winter hiatus to talk about how his mother influenced his comedy, what he thinks is really going on inside Donald Trump’s head (spoiler: nothing good!), and what to expect from his upcoming HBO pilot with Fred Armisen.

GQ: How did you end up on the New York comedy scene?

Julio Torres: I’m originally from El Salvador. I've been in New York for almost 10 years. I moved here to go to school. But school was just the excuse to figure out how to be here and remain here. At the time the goal was a very nebulous writing and/or comedy job.

Was working in comedy always the goal?

Yeah. I wanted to write for TV and I wanted to write for film. But I had no idea how to do any of those things after I graduated so I started doing stand-up as a means of writing, and exposing what I write.

How did your upbringing in El Salvador influence your comedy?

Comedy didn't really come about until later in my life. It's not like I was a kid watching stand-up and wanting to do that. The biggest takeaway from those years is that my mother is very visual and she's very attuned to what shapes and colors and design communicate. That’s something that I've carried into my comedic work. In fact, I think both my parents were surprised that I wasn't doing something that was strictly visual because I've always gravitated towards that. We used to have this house where my mother designed every piece of furniture in it. Everything was accounted for by the inch. She had a potted plant and a dining table, and she wanted both, so she designed a dining table with a hole for the potted plant.

Do you have a favorite shape?

I use to connect to a square a lot. When I had graduated college and I was on a mission to find a way to stay in the country, which as an international student is not easy, I was very disciplined and I only wore black and white because I thought, I don't need any stimulus that's not productive. I became vegan, I was very disciplined, I was just wearing black, and at the time I just felt like a square. There was no room for anything else to come in or go out. Just doing what I was doing, inflexible. Now, I don't know, I don't feel so much like a square anymore.