“I want to have fun. Life ain’t no dress rehearsal. I want to have fun. I’m a comedian; I ain’t no politician. So everything I do is with humor, with love.”

I think you can measure how pathetic your life is by how much joy you get from learning about other people’s faults and troubles.

It’s a pleasure to work with someone who is just as strong as you are.

I have Glocks, .45s, Berettas, Remingtons. I like the marksmanship and the discipline that it takes to be a gun owner. I like the machinery. Being able to take it out and clean it is even more fascinating than having the gun.

When I hit my 20s, I struggled to make it. I got married at 19, and my daughter, Je’Niece, was born a year later. I worked blue collar jobs during the day and comedy clubs at night, and I was earning about $25 a year doing stand-up.

Bernie Mac don’t sugarcoat.

I want to speak directly to the audience, to say, ‘I’m like you – I’m frustrated, I’m not an expert, I don’t have a manual on parenting, I make mistakes, I’m selfish too.’

You can’t be a doctor if you don’t know the entire parts of the body.

I know doing movies is where I need to be. That’s where my audience wants to see me.

You know you poor when you eatin’ breakfast food late. You fryin’ toast? At nine o’clock at night? With bacon? You’re broke.

Hugs aren’t like pieces of pie. Plenty of hugs to go around.

My humor had changed from foolishness to making sense.

You’re never going to see me playing a buffoon.

I think a lot of TV insults the audience.

I can act. I’ve been acting for a long time, but like anything else, don’t nobody owe you nothing. You’ve go to pay your dues. You go from A to Z; you don’t go from M to Z.

I was a street performer for two years.

I’m not afraid to fail. Sometimes when you lose, you win. Sometimes when you win, you lose.

Being a comedian is an incredible thing, but it can be scary sometimes.

There is a very difficult period in a comedian’s career – it’s that window of time where you’re good enough to draw tickets but nobody knows you yet.

They proved that if you quit smoking, it will prolong your life. What they haven’t proved is that a prolonged life is a good thing. I haven’t seen the stats on that yet.

You have to understand how bad I wanted to be a comedian, how much I loved doing it. I still can’t believe I get to do this for a living and have people come up and want to see me.

The role of the comedian is to say ‘Wait a minute’ when a consensus starts to form.

For aspiring comedians? Don’t listen to me. Just go on stage and do what you think is funny.

Whatever talent I had, I’m sure it helped that my parents were in the business and that I grew up around actors, comedians and directors.

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