“As I got older, I got into all kinds of things in the streets – but for some reason, I never got caught up with the gangs growing up. Everybody dug me, man. I never had problems.”

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.

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.

I remember the first time I saw the ‘Sugarhill Gang’ on Soul Train. I was 11 or 12. I was like, ‘What’s going on? How did those guys get on national TV?’ And then, when I was a little older, a rapper from the neighborhood got a record deal. I was shocked.

Growing up with sexual abuse and having to be in gangs and dealing with my own trauma; finding the cultural identity when I was 16, and learning those traditional ways saved me from hurting myself.

I love attention. If I see a gang of girls? That makes me dance even more!

Forever a young Nigga never changing on da gang.

A society that robs an individual of the product of his effort is not strictly speaking a society, but a mob held together by institutionalized gang violence.

A society that robs an individual of the product of his effort is not strictly speaking a society, but a mob held together by institutionalized gang violence.

What are kingdoms without justice? They’re just gangs of bandits.

But sports carried me away from being in a gang, or being associated with drugs. Sports was my way out.