Ideally, you want to be in a fifty-fifty power-sharing arrangement with the audience - both of you are there for a mutually enjoyable experience.

When you take a pause before delivering your punch line, you will be using silence as a creative entity in itself.

I have no desire to be hip to the latest black slang and do the stereotypical black thing. I was a Richard Pryor fan, and I have used profanity in my act. But when it becomes a whole thing that defines blacks, we're limiting ourselves. The enemy is us.

This whole urban rap thing needs to be pulled back some. The ghetto is being glorified, and there's nothing good about the ghetto except getting out of one.

On a good night, I'm just into the flow and seeing the pictures and words in my mind clearly before I say them. On a bad night, which to be honest are nowhere near as bad as when I was starting out, I just concentrate on performing the routines correctly. I focus on my delivery.

I don't think that comedians have a tradition of trashing the next generation.

Evaluate every performance on: stage presence, concentration, delivery, material and lessons learned.