“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 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.

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.

I want to play a villain – I can’t wait to play a villain.

I’m an ordinary guy with an extraordinary job.

I don’t ever watch myself. By watching, you try to perfect yourself, become a robot.

I want to do something that people can really say, ‘Hey, man, that was good, I’m proud of you, I’m proud of that.’ ‘Pride’ and ‘Transformers’ and things like that.

I’ve never been no superficial cat.

Comedy has been so good to me.

Whatever success I’ve had, I always like to top it.

I don’t care about how I look; I’m dedicated to the laughs. You know, I used to be a clown, so – my name was Smoothie the Clown. All the training I had, all my training is geared toward making people laugh, and I didn’t care about being cool.

What is a scientist after all? It is a curious man looking through a keyhole, the keyhole of nature, trying to know what’s going on.

Meat reared on land matures relatively quickly, and it takes only a few pounds of plants to produce a pound of meat.

What usually happens in the educational process is that the faculties are dulled, overloaded, stuffed and paralyzed so that by the time most people are mature they have lost their innate capabilities.

What is a scientist after all? It is a curious man looking through a keyhole, the keyhole of nature, trying to know what’s going on.

I think it’s a cool thing to have kids look up to me and to know that it doesn’t matter, your background or your ethnic background. If you have goals and dreams, you can achieve them.

If you can last until you’re 40 years old, hopefully you’ll be mature enough to figure out the rest of the years.

Any education that matters is liberal. All the saving truths, all the healing graces that distinguish a good education from a bad one or a full education from a half empty one are contained in that word.

I’m not saying that people should live in unrepentant sin. I’m not saying that that’s a mark of a mature believer at all.