I’m a showgirl, as you can tell. I’m ever ready.

‚Kitchen Confidential‘ wasn’t a cautionary or an expose. I wrote it as an entertainment for New York tri-state area line cooks and restaurant lifers, basically; I had no expectation that it would move as far west as Philadelphia.

I’ve always loved the showmanship of professional wrestling. While I love making movies, I love that platform, too.

You think I’m going to ask these sweet 14 year olds to ask their parents to buy a $100 ticket then run around in latex and lip sync? No way.

I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.

If you tell me there’s something I can’t do, I’ll want to do it even more. Especially when it comes to entertaining.

Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without a passion, without business, without entertainment, without care.

I never listen to the radio unless I rent a car.

I like a drama.

My show ‚The Big House‘ was picked up; they flew me to New York. I’m about to step on stage to announce Kevin Hart’s ‚The Big House.‘ And a hand grabs my shoulder, ‚Kevin no, they just decided to cancel it.‘ It’s a serious smack-in-the-face business, and either you can take it, or you can’t.

Speaking purely from a musical standpoint, I think I am a great performer.

It just seems there’s better things to do in your life than be on television if it’s not interesting, if it’s not challenging, if it’s not fun. You know? When it stops being those things for me, I’ll stop making television.

We don’t want people to leave the stadium until the game finishes.

I can remember earning £5,000 a game playing for Hibs at the end of the Seventies. They let me commute from London, train on the Friday and play on Saturday. That lasted until my friends at the Inland Revenue decided to take two-thirds. That wasn’t very entertaining for me.

It’s really fun to be on stage in front of people.

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.

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

There’s my personal life, my sensitive side, and then me as a performer, sexy and energised and fun.

If it’s all instruction, you get annoyed with it and bored, and you stop reading. If it’s all entertainment, you read it quite quickly, your heart going pitty-pat, pitty-pat. But when you finish, that’s it. You’re not going to think about it much afterward, apart from the odd nightmare. You’re not going to read that book again.

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

Everybody loved ‚The A-Team‘ because it was entertainment, pure and simple.

I make pop culture.

Pop music will never be low brow.

I love all of the arts. I love motion pictures. I love stage. I love theater.

I never wanted to perform and never proclaimed myself to be a performer.

There is but one stage for the peasant and the actor.

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.

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

We are all here for a spell, get all the good laughs you can.

You see the film, you might be entertained, and if it’s not a great film, it loses its power very quickly. I think even simply acceptable books stay with us a lot longer.

Anybody that doesn’t like Cardi B a hater!

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

At times in my life the only place I have been happy is when I am on stage.

Movies are fun, but they are no cure for cancer.

Everything I learned I learned from the movies.

Comedy Central was a great network, but ‚Chappelle’s Show‘ took it to a completely different level. Other shows got bigger because so many viewers were watching the ‚Chappelle‘ reruns. For BET, the ‚Real Husbands of Hollywood‘ has that same potential.

I do probably 60 concerts a year in the States. And I go out to clubs in the week. I’m doing new stuff all the time.

Some of my foster families used to send me to the movies to get me out of the house and there I’d sit all day and way into the night. Up in front, there with the screen so big, a little kid all alone, and I loved it. I loved anything that moved up there and I didn’t miss anything that happened and there was no popcorn either.

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

There are folks who now know black families – like the Johnsons on ‚Black-ish‘ or the folks on ‚Modern Family.‘ They become part of who you are. You share their pains. You understand their fears. They make you laugh, and they change how you see the world.

I am a giant proponent of giant screens. But I accept the fact that most of my movies are going to be seen on phones.

I was very honored to get to be part of ‚American Idol.‘

Those movies sure got me into a rut.

WWE is a space where I thrived, and I loved, and I still do. I love connecting with an audience; that is the greatest thing about going back to WWE.

The best book, like the best speech, will do it all – make us laugh, think, cry and cheer – preferably in that order.

I work hard for the audience. It’s entertainment. I don’t need validation.

There’s something about being in front of a live audience that’s fun. It’s a really interesting, very electric, very alive, and intense experience, and you can’t get it anywhere else. And I’ve been doing it since I was 23, so it’s part of my being – it’s part of my fabric as a person.

This life, which had been the tomb of his virtue and of his honour, is but a walking shadow; a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

When it comes down to it, glam rock was all very amusing. At the time, it was funny, then a few years later it became sort of serious-looking and a bit foreboding.

I feel lucky that I can have people laugh solidly for a whole hour by just saying what I think and getting paid for it.

And I love a scary movie. It makes your toes curl and it’s not you going through it.

The celebrity-chef thing, even at its worst, its most annoying, its silliest, its goofiest, its most egregious and cynical, has been a good thing.

I guess you could say it’s always been my destiny to be a performer.

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.

Besides entertainment and action, I want to educate. You know, as a producer or director, we do have a responsibility to society.

Music is part of the life of fashion, too.

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.

A live concert to me is exciting because of all the electricity that is generated in the crowd and on stage. It’s my favorite part of the business, live concerts.

If my films make one more person miserable, I’ll feel I have done my job.

I don’t spend too much time on my phone, laptop or television. However, I do occasionally watch documentaries and shows on streaming platforms.

The secret to humor is surprise.