“Every relationship should eventually become a long-term relationship. Any director that I meet now isn’t just a director. He’s potentially a friend, and someone I can call to do a project that I want or that I have.”

The more I up the ante for myself, the better it is in the long run. I try to interact with my fans as much as possible. It’s good that the person I’m being onstage isn’t really an act. It’s really me.

I live by that. You grind hard so you can play hard. At the end of the day, you put all the work in, and eventually it’ll pay off. It could be in a year, it could be in 30 years. Eventually, your hard work will pay off.

Comedy is my therapy. That’s how I deal with my problems, my personal battles. I talk about it. I give it to my fans. When they laugh at it, it’s a release, for lack of a better word.

Almost anything can be funny if said the right way – but it has to be said the right way.

No matter what, people grow. If you chose not to grow, you’re staying in a small box with a small mindset.

I never treat it like a job or feel that way. It’s the best thing ever to me, and I feel like a kid in a candy store.

My goal as a parent is to make sure they don’t take what they have for granted.

For me, it’s about becoming a mogul, owning my own projects, and establishing myself as a funding producer. That’s what’s big to me. The movies and all that stuff are great, but the fact that I’m in a position to do what I want to do, however I want to do it and when I want to do it is bigger.

My main goal is to be a self-made man and have control over what’s mine.

My business acumen is definitely growing.

An unemployed court jester is nobody’s fool.

People who eat with their mouth open should be punched in the face.

Here’s the thing. We do a movie with a predominantly black cast, and it’s put in a category of being a black film.

As a producer, as a CEO of Hartbeat Productions, I am making deals to put my company in place to win, to put my staff to work so that while all this stuff is going on, they’re in the kitchen cooking. So it’s understanding the longevity of the entertainment business; you get out of it what you put into it.

The day you stop doing the small things is the day you think you’re above everybody else.

I am capable of holding the quote-unquote ‘title’ of leading man. Leading man just means people want to see you and assume that you can hold a film, carry a movie.