The tradition of the South is not urban… I think we are a region of storytellers, naturally, just from our tribal instincts. We did not have the pleasures of the theater or the dance, motion pictures when they came along. We simply entertain each other by talking.

When I do stand-up shows at colleges, girls will talk to me after the show, and that always feels good. I like talking to them.

Doubt in my tradition is something that is very helpful. Because of doubt, you can thirst more and you will get a higher kind of proof.

I prefer to be in a video than to play with it.

To the audience, it’s like I’m changing the subject every five seconds, but to me, my show’s almost like a 90-minute song that I know exactly. I wrote every note, and I know exactly where everything is.

Opera happens because a large number of things amazingly fail to go wrong.

I don’t travel with them, but they can’t be missing in my home. There have to always be dominoes… I used to play with my family – dad, my grandpa, my uncles.

I know some of the best Dolly Parton jokes. I made ‚em up myself.

I want more of my favorite artists or more of the guy that makes the anthems. I want more.

Black people comprehend the South. We understand its weight. It has rested on our backs… I knew that my heart would break if ever I put my foot down on that soil, moist, still, with old hurts. I had to face the fear/loathing at its source or it would consume me whole.

Football games are on TV, and it doesn’t affect stadium attendance at all. It’s the same with movies. People who really love movies and like to go out on a Saturday night will go to the movie theater.

There’s only one thing that can kill the movies, and that’s education.

Growing up I didn’t watch movies.

I love Chris Brown. He’s a superstar. He’s one of the best singers out there.

I always knew from that moment, from the time I found myself at home in that little segregated library in the South, all the way up until I walked up the steps of the New York City library, I always felt, in any town, if I can get to a library, I’ll be OK. It really helped me as a child, and that never left me.

If you have fear, you are bound by tradition, you follow some leader or guru. When you are bound by tradition, when you are afraid of your husband or your wife, you lose your dignity as an individual human being.

People don’t want drama 365 days a year. I’m a sense of relief; it’s my job to take your mind off what’s bad for that brief second you’re in the room with me, regardless of shape, race, colour or anything. It brings people together, and it makes me feel good about what I’m doing.

I do all my own stunts. I’m kidding.

Why, except as a means of livelihood, a man should desire to act on the stage when he has the whole world to act in, is not clear to me.

Comedy just pokes at problems, rarely confronts them squarely. Drama is like a plate of meat and potatoes, comedy is rather the dessert, a bit like meringue.

‚Star Wars‘ is fun, its exciting, its inspirational, and people respond to that. It’s what they want.

Early on, I was so impressed with Charles Dickens. I grew up in the South, in a little village in Arkansas, and the whites in my town were really mean, and rude. Dickens, I could tell, wouldn’t be a man who would curse me out and talk to me rudely.

I think television has had a vast, unbelievable impact on us.

I’m not a film buff. I don’t watch a lot of movies.

Tea to the English is really a picnic indoors.

I want to play a fireman and a spy. I want to learn special effects.

In our home there was always prayer – aloud, proud and unapologetic.

In the end, everything is a gag.

Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.

My goal was never to be the loudest or the craziest. It was to be the most entertaining.

I enjoy driving on the sim, doing stuff like that, staying at home.

Crankiness is at the essence of all comedy. My wife and I were discussing the different types of cranky. There’s entertaining cranky, annoying cranky, angry cranky.

Music is part of the life of fashion, too.

I’m all about surprises. If you watch a horror movie, and it’s called ‚Kiss Land,‘ it’s probably going to be the most terrifying thing you’ve ever seen in your life.

One of the things you’re doing when you make art, apart from entertaining yourself and other people, is trying to see what ways of working feel good, what feels right.

‚The Simpsons‘ appearances were great fun. But I don’t take them too seriously. I think ‚The Simpsons‘ have treated my disability responsibly.

Kids end up seeing my movies anyway but some of the mothers get mad at me so I figured I’d make one that I can’t get yelled at for.

According to Lifetime, I don’t know anything about TV.

Don’t bother about being modern. Unfortunately it is the one thing that, whatever you do, you cannot avoid.

I love making people laugh. And I love laughing.

I’ve been reading tabloids since I was nine. I love a good story.

You make ‚em, I amuse ‚em.

The ideal death, I think, is what was the ideal Victorian death, you know, with your grandchildren around you, a bit of sobbing. And you say goodbye to your loved ones, making certain that one of them has been left behind to look after the shop.

I love crime, I love mysteries, and I love ghosts.

I knew early on that I wanted to entertain in some form. And I knew I would work as hard as anyone to do it.

Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.

I have kind of a funny relationship with movies. I don’t have to see the whole movie to get an impression of it or to let it have an influence on me.

Will the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? And the rest of you, if you’ll just rattle your jewelry.

You’re never going to kill storytelling, because it’s built into the human plan. We come with it.

In Hollywood you can see things at night that are fast enough to be in the Olympics in the day time.

Fishing is much more than fish. It is the great occasion when we may return to the fine simplicity of our forefathers.

Stand-up is hard.

I saw ‚Magic Mike,‘ and I thought it was great.

Movies can and do have tremendous influence in shaping young lives in the realm of entertainment towards the ideals and objectives of normal adulthood.

I used to rush home to see ‚Match Of The Day.‘ Whatever I was doing, I wouldn’t miss it.

Most of the stuff I do on the show comes out of me just trying to make my friends laugh.

I think ‚Hail to the Chief‘ has a nice ring to it.

I absolutely want to have a career where you make’em laugh and make’em cry. It’s all theater.

Lots of people who complained about us receiving the MBE received theirs for heroism in the war – for killing people. We received ours for entertaining other people. I’d say we deserve ours more.

On a good night, I get underwear, bras, and hotel-room keys thrown onstage… You start to think that you’re Tom Jones.