A technique I developed quite naturally to help me make smooth transitions was to use a word or phrase from the next routine in the preceding one.

This whole urban rap thing needs to be pulled back some. The ghetto is being glorified, and there's nothing good about the ghetto except getting out of one.

Black people drink lots of beer. However, you won't see us skiing down a mountain for one, or see us diving for Frisbees on concrete for one.

Originality is never embraced as quickly as the commonplace.

Very few blacks will take up golf until the requirement for plaid pants is dropped.

Don't try to give a funny opinion; give your opinion in a way that will be funny.

Bombing teaches you how badly you want to become a comedian. Because unless it's a burning desire, you'll quit when the consistent bombing becomes too much to take.

If I'm crisp and economical in my delivery, have smooth transitions, movement and animation, and flights of fancy, that would get me an A.

When I saw a sign on the freeway that said, "Los Angeles 445 miles," I said to myself, "I've got to get out of this lane."

You can't wait forever for an audience to get the joke, but you should give them at least two seconds to join in before you go on to the next one.

I advise treating the studio audience like a nightclub audience because that's the reason you're doing television - to get them to come see you in a nightclub.

Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country.

There’s a universalunderstanding betweenmen of the silent sorrowa man endures whenhe loses a woman heloves

Maxim 30: A little trust goes a long way. The less you use, the further you'll go.-The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries

In America, black is a country.

I really became convinced I wanted to tell the story of the real-life model for the Degas sculpture 'Little Dancer Aged 14,' which was unveiled in 1881, the Belle Epoque.

I have a lust for life.

Friends are an intersection. A route back to the world.

Poetry is an attenuation, a rehandling, an echo of crude experience; it is itself a theoretic vision of things at arm's length.

A major of colored troops is here with his party capturing negroes, with or without their consent....They are being conscripted.

Come live with us, Diana. Don't argue. Just say yes." Diana looked at the ground to hide her emotions. Then she said, "Would I have to be hearing you two going at it night and day?