I've never seen anyone more messed up over success than Richard Pryor. For him, it's a constant battle between success in the white world and keeping it real for his black self.

When they were making black films in the '60s and the '70s, everyone knew their place, if you get my drift. You understand? Everyone knew the rules, and everyone knew their place. Everyone knew what to say. They had the written rules in Hollywood film, and the unwritten rules.

My comedy is a nuclear bomb inside my mind. It's a weapon that's never been tested. It just blows up and flattens everybody.

We have a lot of black Anglo-Saxons. Their skin is black, but their brain is white. When I get real mad at them, I call them graham crackers.

I don't do drugs. Because my grandmother raised me. I think like an old, black, Southern woman. If I'd have done coke, I'd probably be cooking pancakes.

Listen, we've got one little ol' black president, and white folks are upset, but they've had 43.

I have nothing to do with racism in America; it was here when I got here.