“My grandmother always told me how you start is how you finish.”

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.

You can’t change what happened. Just like you can’t change the future by worrying about it. You just have to keep moving.

Bernie Mac just says what you think but are afraid to say.

It took me a long time to get to where I’m at, in my career and as a man. I was going through my trials and tribulations in life, and it gave me the strength to tackle things that have come my way.

Why I was so intrigued with Red Skelton was because he was able to make you cry and laugh and the same time. That was power.

I was an early reader, and my grandmother, who as a child had been forbidden to read by a father who believed books.

My grandmother flew only once in her life, and that was the day she and her new husband ascended into the skies of Victorian London in the wicker basket of a hot-air balloon.

Why don’t we focus on what Afghan women can do? They can cook, bear children, and pray. As I recall, that was fine for our grandmothers.

I am indebted to [my grandmothers] always for cradling me in the heart of Christ and encouraging my passion to press towards the mark of the high calling on my life, wherever that takes me.

I had praying grandmothers who bathed me in “The Word” and filled the atmosphere with worship.

We lose touch with parts of ourselves defined as unacceptable by that consciousness; with the vital toughness and visionary strength of the angry grandmothers, the fierce market women of the Ibo’s Women’s War.

My hero among heroes is my grandmother, she’s the epitome of strength and I try to mock that strength all the time. She’s a beast.

I never knew my grandmothers, but I could always count of the Bookmobile.