When you're on stage performing stand-up, things only happen one time. I've done bits where I improv a joke, and people are dying. The next show, I try to repeat it, I can't do it. Because with the first audience that was our moment. It can't happen the same way again. We were all there: a certain type of people were at that show and we all got it.

I would only take a role that I know I'm comfortable in and I can do. I've turned down plenty of things because I'd feel it's not me, and I wouldn't want to come on someone's project and flip that.

Some of the best dramatic actors have started in comedy.

I could never live with you; not 'cause I'm racist or nothing. It's just 'cause as a black man in America, I need to have someone I can come home and complain about white people to. And that just don't work with my white wife.

Believe it or not, I write on stage. I can't write anywhere else; I have to be in a moment. I also have to challenge myself to make something funny out of a premise. I never have my own jokes written. I have to change things as I go along, and I have to entertain myself.

Man, you can come see me six or seven times in a row and you'll never see the same show twice, because I don't like to be robotic onstage. I like to perform for that particular audience.

I did a club one night - the speakers were old as hell. My jokes were coming out in black and white.