Black audiences are hard. They always think they’re better than you. So you got to come with a little extra to satisfy them.
Sometimes when you lose you win, son. Failure is just life’s way of preparing you for success.
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 took my sports experience to my life on stage. That’s why I’m so disciplined. Playing sports, I was always underestimated. I was never picked first to do anything. This always helped me. It taught me how to push myself.
I’ve introduced myself with comedy, and once you’ve introduced yourself as something, that’s where people keep you. That’s where people like to hold you.
When I go onstage, I want to relieve your mind, your pressures.
I want to play a villain – I can’t wait to play a villain.
I was good at keeping my mother from crying.
When I started in the clubs, I had to work places where didn’t nobody else want to work. I had to do clubs where street gangs were, had to do motorcycle gangs, gay balls and things of that nature.
I can act. I’ve been acting for a long time, but like anything else, don’t nobody owe you nothing. You’ve go to pay your dues. You go from A to Z; you don’t go from M to Z.
I’m not ashamed to tell the truth about what happened in my family. I think that’s what makes my comedy different.
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.
They say if you don’t have your health you ain’t got nothing, but the truth is you ain’t got nothing if you don’t have no one to worry about your health.
I’m so black, I leave fingerprints on coal.
If I can tell someone a story that makes them bend over and laugh, that’s bigger than anything else.
My daughter was a beautiful child.
I want to do something that people can really say, ‘Hey, man, that was good, I’m proud of you, I’m proud of that.’ ‘Pride’ and ‘Transformers’ and things like that.
Comedy has been so good to me.
The two sides of Bernie – that’s a quiet weapon that I have.
You can’t be a doctor if you don’t know the entire parts of the body.