I hate to let people down. I was like that in sports and I was like that in comedy. I was like that at work. When I worked General Motors and stuff like that, when I say something, I mean it.
I don’t care about how I look; I’m dedicated to the laughs. You know, I used to be a clown, so – my name was Smoothie the Clown. All the training I had, all my training is geared toward making people laugh, and I didn’t care about being cool.
I’m an ordinary guy with an extraordinary job.
Bernie Mac don’t sugarcoat.
The success of my comedy has been not being afraid to touch on subject matters or issues that everyone else is politically scared of.
My comedy comes from pain. I can’t stand to see someone hurting.
I don’t have no story. Everybody wants this Hollywood story, but the world don’t owe you nothing, man. It’s what you owe the world.
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.
Okay, first rule of this carpool. No breaking wind in my car. The only gas that Bernie Mac want to be smelling is unleaded.
Every time you see a black romance, it’s over-the-top. There always has to be extreme hostility between the sexes. He has to cheat. She has to show him how independently strong she is, not just as a woman but as a black woman.
If you mess something up, remember who got you there. Don’t be pointing fingers, even if finger-pointing is called for. Only one you got to blame is your own self.
I’ve always been a reserved cat. When I play sports, there’s people used to get mad at me because I didn’t hang out and things like that. I’ve never been that kind of person. Nothing has changed in that regard. I’ve never been posse, and all that. I’m a quiet storm.
Bernie Mac just says what you think but are afraid to say.
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.
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.
When I hit my 20s, I struggled to make it. I got married at 19, and my daughter, Je’Niece, was born a year later. I worked blue collar jobs during the day and comedy clubs at night, and I was earning about $25 a year doing stand-up.
It was rough being dark. I got heat from my own people more than anyone else. I remember going to my mom and saying, ‘Why am I so black?’ And she said, ‘Because I’m black. You just gotta always work harder than the average bear.’
You have to meet all of the challenges, big and small. Because how you start is how you finish.
When you’re offstage, that’s the footprint. That’s the man God’s gonna judge.