“People like rumors. They’re going to say things like, ‘You was at the club with Lil’ Kim, and you and Kanye West got into a fist fight.’ You can’t get upset. You’ve got to keep hope alive.”

When I go onstage, I want to relieve your mind, your pressures.

I’m very much disciplined because I’m more mature. When I was young I just wanted to live, I could jump, I could run, I was quick and I was relentless.

I’m an entertainer and I really enjoy entertaining. I think if you’re going to really be what you say you are, you have to really live it, work it, practice it, and think it.

I came up in the community center. I used to be physical director of the South Central Community Center in Chicago on 83rd. It’s still there. It used to be around there when I was a kid.

I became the storyteller of South Side Chicago. I used an old Kiwi liquid shoe polish as a microphone. I’d go around the house interviewing everybody, telling stupid jokes, doing voices. I mimicked Sidney Poitier, Sammy Davis Jr., people on ‘Laugh-In,’ Flip Wilson.

I’ve been in training for stardom.

You know, every time it comes, every time that light comes on or every time that camera comes on, every time that microphone comes on, the Mac Man seek and destroy.

Why do people love Richard Pryor so much? ‘Cause he had problems.

My family are police officers, detectives. My brother Mitch is FBI. Mitch is like that – a stern enforcer.

I learned hard lessons in life; I had to because I had so much happen: My mother died my sophomore year in high school. The next year, same day, my brother dropped dead. Two years after that, I got married because my girlfriend got pregnant. The year after my wedding, my father – who I had only recently met – died.

I wasn’t disciplined at all. As good of an athlete as I was, I was not disciplined. Had I had the drive that I have in comedy, and acting, and writing, that’s why I knew it just wasn’t right for me.

I was born October 5, 1957, on the South Side of Chicago, in the Woodlawn area, a neighborhood that hasn’t changed much in forty-five years. Our house was on 66th and Blackstone, but the city tore it down when the rats took over.

I’m funny. I’m a comedian. I’m not a clown.

Making people laugh is what I’ve been doing since I was like four or five years old. I still have a lust, I still have a passion. I don’t care about how I look, I’m dedicated to the laughs.

I want people to say at the end of my day, you know, like I used to say about Sidney Poitier and James Cagney and Joan Crawford and Red Skelton and those guys and Bill Cosby. They did quality and substance. You always remember them.

The one thing about comedy, making it become a part of you, the audience loves it, because you become part of them.

You can always create something that’s different because there’s more than two people in the ring.

I can’t remember any text of mine where I said that one should fight Hitler without violence; I’m not an idiot.

It’s impossible having five, six, seven people in a room being creative together and not fight, because you want to fight. It’s the only way creativity works, if you all put your ideas in.

I love controlling a race, chewing up an opponent.

My all-time favorite match that I’ve ever had was against Kyle O’Reilly in 2012, the ‘hybrid fighting rules match’ where we were bleeding buckets all over the place. And it was really a match that took my career to the next level.

I’ve had to fight for roles and I’ve lost a hundred roles, but ‘Smoking’ and ‘Smith’ were phone calls. That’s the dream.

Losing fights, or even winning fights, can be heartbreaking, and you can throw that away, but the truth is that it does make our lives better.

The lordship of man over man is the root cause of all corrupt rule.