1. “The world can’t tell you who you are. You’ve just got to figure out who you are and be there—for better or worse.”

2. “No matter how old you are, if a little kid hands you a toy phone, you answer it.”

3. “I’m cool with failing so long as I know that there are people around me that love me unconditionally.”

4. “You have to be careful of the company you keep.”

5. “I’m not smoking crack. I’m definitely stressed out.”

6. “The hardest thing to do is to be true to yourself, especially when everybody is watching.”

7. “What did the 5 fingers say to the face? S L A P!”

8. “I’m famous today. People like me today. Might not like me tomorrow. You can’t count on it.”

9. “Fame for me is like a place, a country I’m taking a tour through.”

10. “Where am I from? A little town called none of yo g*dd*mn business.”

11. “Constantly take inventory of what’s important to you.”

12. “I love my jokes.”

13. “Being famous is great; it’s not bad, or horrible, or anything.”

14. “I wish I had more hands, so I could give those t*tt**s four thumbs down!”

15. “I’m an introspective dude.”

16. “After a while, a joke, if you say it too much, just becomes contrived or fake-sounding.”

17. “I enjoy my own thoughts sometimes.”

18. “These people are not crazy, they’re strong people. Maybe the environment is a little sick.”

19. “Hey hey hey, smoke weed everyday.”

20. “You know, to be able to do something great in your life, you’re gonna have to realize your failures. You’re gonna have to embrace them and figure out how to overcome it.”

21. “You’ve got to say ‘yes’ to your destiny. Life’s happening right now, look around you. There goes some life. Come on, Mamma, live!”

22. “If you don’t have the right people around you and you’re moving at a million miles an hour, you can lose yourself.”

23. “You know, you must be doing something right if old people like you.”

24. “‘Cause my life is dope, and I do dope sh*t.”

25. “The only way you can know where the line is is if you cross it.”

26. “My father told me, ‘Name your price in the beginning. If it ever gets more expensive than the price you name, get out of there.’”

27. “Sometimes, you have , so that you can be the lamb that you really are.”

28. “The higher up I went, the less happy I was.”

29. “I got real important relationships in my life that are very empowering relationships.”

30. “I think every group of black guys should have at least one white guy in it.”

31. “Somebody broke into my house once, this is a good time to call the police, but mmmm, nope. The house was too nice. It was a really nice house, but they’d never believe I lived in it. They’d be like, ‘He’s still here!’”

32. “The worst thing to call somebody is crazy. It’s dismissive.”

33. “I just always loved stand-up. It’s like . You say something, and a whole room full of people laughs together. Say something else, they laugh again. The fact that people come to see that and participate in that, I don’t know, it’s just like magic.”

34. “Everyone around me says, ‘You’re a genius! You’re great! That’s your voice!’ But I’m not sure if they’re right.’”

35. “The way the people around you position themselves around you to get in your pockets and in your mind is infuriating to me.”

36. “I was doing sketches that were funny but socially irresponsible. I felt I was deliberately and I was overwhelmed.”

37. “There’s a lot of people who don’t want anything from me but to laugh and have a good time. You see them at the show and they like, they dress up to come see your show and stuff. And they pack these auditoriums and it’s a lot of fun, man. It’s like, this is how I started, and it’s still fun for me.”

38. “If someone sits and stares at you while you eat, you won’t even eat the way you normally do, because it’ll make you so uncomfortable. If I look at my dog when he’s eating, he will look at me like, ‘Dave, I will bite you.’”

39. “The only thing harder than leaving show business is coming back.”

40. “The bottom line is no matter what happens to you, you gotta keep going, and bitterness is quite cumbersome. Jokes are a way of shaking that off, processing something with the alchemy of levity.”

41. “People don’t know what it’s like standing up there onstage, when you have a wall of people smiling at you.”

42. “I love being famous, it’s phenomenal.”

43. “The mark of greatness is when everything before you is obsolete, and everything after you bear your mark.”

44. “Whether it means having a show, or a movie, or just being on a stage, I need an avenue to say what I have to say.”

45. “If I can make a teacher’s salary doing comedy, I think that’s better than being a teacher.”

46. “Once you been performing on the streets, you can conquer any venue.”

47. “If I put forth a legitimate effort, then I feel like, if that doesn’t work out, that’s all I can do.”

48. “I got a lot of positive people around me.”

49. “Stand-up is the kind of gig that’ll show you where you’re at.”

50. “I care about the work I do, but I’m not going to say that money’s not an issue.”

51. “They do what they do for money, that’s all. I don’t even know why you’re listening to me. I’ve done commercials for both Coke and Pepsi. Truth is, I can’t even taste the difference, but Pepsi paid me last, so there it is.”

52. “I don’t want the money. I don’t want the drama. I just want to do my show. I want to have fun again.”

53. “If you look at life—anything in life—through the framework of money, you will miss most of the picture.”

54. “Money is the fuel for choices.”

55. “‘There’s not too many people that don’t think I’m crazy, for walking away from so much money,’ he said. I’m at a restaurant with . It’s a nice restaurant, we’re eating dinner. I look across the room, I say, ‘You see this guy over here, across the room? He has $100 million.’ And we’re eating the same entree. So, okay, fine, I don’t have $50 million or whatever it was, but say I have $10 million in the bank. The difference in lifestyle is miniscule.”

56. “Most of the people around me have a vested interest in how much money I make. You know, so a celebrity could find themselves in a position where people could have meetings about their life without them involved. And when I say ‘their life’ I mean not their professional life either. They could talk about their personal life.”

57. “But money is not the end-all, be-all. There are other things in my life that I did not purchase with money that are very valuable.”

58. “One of the things that happens when people make the leap from a certain amount of money to tens of millions of dollars is that the people around you dramatically change.”

59. “I felt in a lot of instances I was deliberately being put through stress because when you’re a guy who generates money, people have a vested interest in controlling you.”

60. “Because I was surrounded by so much negativity at some point that it took me going back and doing stand-up to realize, you know, people really like me.”

61. “I’ve been a comedian since I was fourteen. But I’ve never really been a CEO.”

62. “I always take a relationship to the next level. If that works out, I take it to the next level after that, until I finally reach that level when it becomes absolutely necessary for me to leave.”

63. “I don’t get mad at a photograph because it wasn’t taken today.”

64. “Lady, I’m just a n*gg* that loves t*tt**s.”

65. “I don’t like letting my friends drive drunk, but I was smokin’ a joint I really couldn’t say sh*t to the guy.”

66. “Twitter is a bathroom wall. Why would I write my thoughts on a bathroom wall?”

67. “I have all these weird fantasies. Going coast-to-coast on my motorcycle and having random barbecues all over America. No show, no nothing.”

68. “I don’t want anything bad to happen to the United States, but if North Korea ever drops a nuclear bomb on this country, I swear to God I hope it lands in Hartford, Connecticut.”

69. “‘What are you looking at? I’m trying to eat.’ It’s something that dehumanizes a person, being on display like that.”

70. “Every black American is bilingual. All of them. We speak street vernacular and we speak ‘job interview.’”

71. “Things like racism are institutionalized. You might not know any bigots. You feel like, ‘Well I don’t hate black people so I’m not a racist,’ but you benefit from racism. Just by merit, the color of your skin. The opportunities that you have, you’re privileged in ways that you might not even realize because you haven’t been deprived of certain things. We need to talk about these things in order for them to change.”

72. “Chivalry is dead. Women killed it.”

73. “I still think people do have racial hang-ups, but I think one of the reasons I can joke about it is people are shedding those racial hatreds.”

74. “All white people talk about when they get high is other times that they got high.”

75. “I don’t normally talk about my religion publicly because I don’t want people to associate me and my flaws with this beautiful thing. And I believe it is beautiful if you learn it the right way.”

76. “All I’ll say about Elian is thank God he’s Cuban. ‘Cause if he was Haitian you’d’ve never heard about his *ss. If Elian Gonzales was Elian Mumumbo from Haiti, they would’ve pushed that little rubber tube right back in the water. Sorry little fella, all full. Good luck!”

77. “Just cuz I eat chicken and . They think that something’s wrong with me. Let me tell you something, if you don’t like chicken and watermelon, something is wrong with you, there is something wrong with you! Where are all these people who don’t like chicken and watermelon? I’m sick of hearing about how bad it is, it’s great! I’m to approach me to do a commercial n*gg*, I’ll do it for free chicken! It’s the least I can do.”

78. “Like, see, I’d never vote for George Bush Junior, but I don’t know anything about his politics. All I know about George Bush Junior is that that guy sniffed cocaine. That’s right. Now, listen, we can’t have that sh*t in the White House. That may be fine for a mayor, but goddammit, not the White House! The stakes are too high. He’d be sellin’ nuclear secrets for 20 or 30 dollars and sh*t.”

79. “I want to tell my jokes. I want to have time with my children. I want to entertain people. And at one point, I’ll walk away from show business. But I don’t want to walk away empty-handed.”

80. “My kids look actually happy. And I learned early on that perfectionism and parenthood is a toxic combination for everybody involved. In other words, so many things can flourish naturally. All you gotta do is make sure the soil’s right. I view myself more like a guide than a ruler.”

81. “You can become famous, but you can’t become unfamous. You can become infamous, but not unfamous.”

82. “Remember what the Bible says: he who is without sin, cast the first rock, and I shall smoketh it.”

83. “My wife asked me once if I weren’t a comedian what I would do. I couldn’t answer the question. I never imagined doing anything else.”

84. “I think are really good for relieving stress.”

85. “There’s something about doing stand-up, that’s cathartic.”

86. “Comedy is a very approval-oriented field.”

87. “I support anyone’s right to be who they want to be. My question is, to what extent do I have to participate in your self-image?”

88. “Something about New York, man. You can do more comedy there probably than you can anywhere in the world. If you’re interested in being funny, New York is the place to go.”

89. “When I’m on stage, I get really happy there. Maybe that’s the only time in my adult life I feel like myself.”

90. “The language you are about to hear is disturbing.”

91. “My generation is under-entertained.”

92. “Ralph Nader has slavery reparations on his platform, which makes me think he’s not serious. If he thought he could win, he wouldn’t even say that.”

93. “The on the corner trick—not gonna fall for that sh*t.”

94. “What is wrong with me? I just bought a bag of weed from an infant.”

95. “Wow! That’s a good question. Is ‘I don’t know’ an acceptable answer?”

96. “My own life is still accessible to people. I could see a guy walking down the street and, even though I’m famous, I have more in common with this guy than, like, Brad Pitt.”

97. “Why don’t you click your heels three times and go back to Africa.”

98. “They got a character on there named Oscar. They treat this guy like sh*t the entire show. They judge him right in his face, ‘Oscar you are so mean! Isn’t he kids?’ ‘Yeah Oscar! You’re a grouch!’ It’s like, ‘Bitch! I live in a f*ck*ng trashcan!’”

99. “Dave! Relax! Close your buttcheeks!”

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