“I can’t build myself by beating somebody down.”

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.

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 don’t want any title. I just say what I say, and hopefully somebody gets it, man. I’m not perfect, and I’m just here and trying to make a dollar, and being real at the same time, you know?

It’s about taking advantage of the opportunities you have right now, and right now we’re in a position where you call somebody and they’re willing to pick up and take the call because they’re a fan, you have to take advantage of that and have a chance to capitalize on your ideas.

Therapy isn’t curing somebody of something; it is a means of helping a person explore himself, his life, his consciousness. My purpose as a therapist is to find out what it means to be human.

I don’t know what the definition of pornography is and nobody else does either. Pornography is somebody else’s erotica that you don’t like.

Everybody is somebody’s Jew.

A mien which seems to say, “You are looking at somebody now.” For this inner sense of worth that comes with being in love does not seem to depend essentially on whether the love is returned or not.

I think you just have to keep knocking down doors, you have to keep being aggressive, and even if somebody says ‘No’, then you have to knock on the next door.

When I first found out I had HIV, I had to find somebody who was living with it, who could help me understand my journey and what I was going to have to deal with day-to-day.