Richard Pryor Quotes

The reason people use a crucifix against vampires is because vampires are allergic to bullshit.

You can't talk about fucking in America, people say you're dirty. But if you talk about killing somebody, that's cool.

Everyone carries around his own monsters.---Richard Pryor

As it stands right now, I lead Richard Pryor in heart attacks, two to one. However, Richard still leads me, one to nothing, in burning yourself up.

What I'm saying might be profane, but it's also profound.

But thoughts don't care about truth and shit. They sit up in your mind and fuck with you whenever.

I believe the ability to think is blessed. If you can think about a situation, you can deal with it. The big struggle is to keep your head clear enough to think.

I never met anybody who said when they were a kid, "I wanna grow up and be a critic.

The reason people use a crucifix against vampires is that vampires are allergic to bull shit.

Do you know how you felt when you would lean all the way back in a chair, and just before you were about to tip over, at the very last second, you'd catch yourself ? That's how I feel all the time.

Who you gonna believe, bitch? Me? or your lying eyes?

Crosses only scare vampires away because they're allergic to bullshit.

I see people as the nucleus of a great idea that hasn't come to be yet.

*kiss*

the less people knew, the louder they got.

There should be a Stage IV of black identity—Unmitigated Blackness. I’m not sure what Unmitigated Blackness is, but whatever it is, it doesn’t sell. On the surface Unmitigated Blackness is a seeming unwillingness to succeed. It’s Donald Goines, Chester Himes, Abbey Lincoln, Marcus Garvey, Alfre Woodard, and the serious black actor. It’s Tiparillos, chitterlings, and a night in jail. It’s the crossover dribble and wearing house shoes outside. It’s “whereas” and “things of that nature.” It’s our beautiful hands and our fucked-up feet. Unmitigated Blackness is simply not giving a fuck. Clarence Cooper, Charlie Parker, Richard Pryor, Maya Deren, Sun Ra, Mizoguchi, Frida Kahlo, black-and-white Godard, Céline, Gong Li, David Hammons, Björk, and the Wu-Tang Clan in any of their hooded permutations. Unmitigated Blackness is essays passing for fiction. It’s the realization that there are no absolutes, except when there are. It’s the acceptance of contradiction not being a sin and a crime but a human frailty like split ends and libertarianism. Unmitigated Blackness is coming to the realization that as fucked up and meaningless as it all is, sometimes it’s the nihilism that makes life worth living. Sitting

I roamed L.A. by night. I got repeatedly rousted by LAPD. I sensed that a cop-street fool compact existed. I behaved accordingly. I denied all criminal intent. I acted respectfully. My height-to-weight ratio and unhygienic appearance caused some cops to taunt me. I sparred back. Street schtick often ensued. I mimicked jailhouse jigs like some WASP Richard Pryor. Rousts turned into streetside yukfests. They played like Jack Webb unhinged. I started to dig the LAPD. I started to grok cop humor. I couldn't quite peg it as performance art. I hadn't read Joseph Wambaugh yet.

In stand-up, you do need to be having fun up there like Richard Pryor said, but you have to know yourself well, too. You have to know when you make different faces, or do different things, you get certain reactions. You start learning and it’s like playing a piano. You just know exactly what keys to stroke, ’cause really with comedy, you’re like fiddling with people’s souls. You resonate on the same frequency as them, trying to get them to relate.

When the crowd is with you, the jokes are fresh, your timing is just right, and the moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars. You are exactly where you should be, and there is nothing better. Comedy is a rare gift from the gods, an awesome invention. It propels you right into the heart of the universe. No wonder all the great comedians had such destructive private lives. Lenny Bruce had to shoot up, Richard Pryor had to freebase. Sam Kinison was just as abusive towards himself as he was to the crowd. After you get the audience into that kind of frenzy, and you are being worshiped like the false idol you are, how do you leave the stage and transition back into real life? How can you just come down? How can you ease back into mortality? What will you do for an encore? What is there left to do but set yourself on fire?

I’ve found that there’s no real comfort in success. There’s never time to slow down, sit back, and relax. But there did come a moment later in my career when I knew that I had truly made it as a comedian. After I presented Richard Pryor with the lifetime achievement award at the American Comedy Awards, we were backstage posing for pictures. He looked up at me and said, “I stole your album.” For a split second, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The great Richard Pryor stealing my material? I was honored and stunned at the same time. “In Peoria, I went into the record store and I put it under my jacket and I walked out,” he continued. “Richard, I get a quarter royalty on every album.” With that, Richard Pryor pulled out a quarter and handed it to me. To have your album stolen by Richard Pryor is quite an achievement.

It is better to have money and not to need it, than to need it and not to have it.

Someone called all the newspapers in New York and told them I'd died. I've been told by almost everyone it was an ex-wife - I've had a few so it's hard to pinpoint which one - but who knows for sure?

they kind of formed a prejudice in their head that aliens can only be enjoyed as fiction. Because if you believe in them as fact, you are saying the thing that every unpopular scientific breakthrough in history has said.” “Which is what?” “That humans are not at the center of things. You know, the planet is in orbit around the sun. That was a fucking hilarious joke in the fifteen hundreds, but Copernicus wasn’t a comedian. He was, apparently, the least funny man of the whole Renaissance. He made Raphael look like Richard Pryor. But he was telling the fucking truth. The planet is in orbit around the sun. But that was out there, I’m telling you. ’Course, he made sure he was dead by the time it was published. Let Galileo take the heat.” “Right,

Mudbone: See I’ve lived through hard times before. People talk about these as hard times. Hard times was way back. They didn’t even have a year for it. Just called it “Hard Times.” It was dark all the time. I think the sun came out on Wednesday. And it you didn’t have your ass up early. You missed it. So I happened to be out there one Wednesday… and the sun hit me right in the face. I grabbed a bunch of it and rubbed it all over myself.

There were three great comedians in my formative years—Bill Cosby, Bill Murray, and Richard Pryor—and they wrecked comedy for a generation. How? By never saying anything funny. You can quote a Steve Martin joke, or a Rodney Dangerfield line, but Pryor, Cosby, and Murray? The things they said were funny only when they said them. In Cosby’s case, it didn’t even need to be sentences: “The thing of the thing puts the milk in the toast, and ha, ha, ha!” It was gibberish and America loved it. The problem was that they inspired a generation of comedians who tried coasting on personality—they were all attitude and no jokes. It was also a time when comedy stars didn’t seem to care. Bill Murray made some lousy movies; Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy made even more; and any script that was too lame for these guys, Chevy Chase made. These were smart people—they had to know how bad these films were, but they just grabbed a paycheck and did them. Most of these comic actors started as writers—they could have written their own scripts, but they rarely bothered. Then, at the end of a decade of lazy comedy and half-baked material, The Simpsons came along. We cared about jokes, and we worked endless hours to cram as many into a show as possible. I’m not sure we can take all the credit, but TV and movies started trying harder. Jokes were back. Shows like 30 Rock and Arrested Development demanded that you pay attention. These days, comedy stars like Seth Rogen, Amy Schumer, Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, and Jonah Hill actually write the comedies they star in.

Richard Pryor is in it, too, as Charlie Snow, whose whole deal is that he’s learning Spanish so he can sneak into the pre–Jackie Robinson major leagues as a Cuban. It’s a funny bit, and he calls himself Carlos Nevada, which is a cool name.

Rain Pryor was born July 16, 1969. Richard and

Lawrence laughed at that one like it was a Richard Pryor special.

Yes, being black is a full-time job: sometimes you are invisible, other times you are hyper-visible,” he says. “Sometimes you are welcome, other times you are not. The thermostat is always moving and you have to keep adapting to find some comfort level. Richard Pryor used to talk about going to Africa and people there telling him he was white. Even though he was black, he just wasn’t black enough.

That humans are not at the centre of things. You know, the planet is in orbit around the sun. That was a fucking hilarious joke in the 1500s, but Copernicus wasn’t a comedian. He was, apparently, the least funny man of the whole Renaissance. He made Raphael look like Richard Pryor. But he was telling the fucking truth.

Até então, quem usava a freebase eram principalmente os brancos, que queimavam coca em colheres ou pedaços de papel alumínio. Eles cozinhavam com água sanitária, amônia, ou qualquer outra merda fedorenta que se usa para limpar a casa. O problema era que isso poderia fritar a cara de um filho da puta. Foi assim que Richard Pryor se incendiou, cara.

Unmitigated Blackness is simply not giving a fuck. Clarence Cooper, Charlie Parker, Richard Pryor, Maya Deren, Sun Ra, Mizoguchi, Frida Kahlo, black-and-white Godard, Céline, Gong Li, David Hammons, Björk, and the Wu-Tang Clan in any of their hooded permutations.

And Richard Pryor said, ‘I don’t like cocaine. I just like the way it smells.

popular TV sitcoms sprang up, each a variation on a single theme: something alien is close and secretly among us, and one person is burdened with protecting all others from the unspeakable truth of their presence and power: My Favorite Martian, My Mother the Car, I Dream of Jeannie, The Munsters, Mister Ed, Bewitched—they all pointed to the growing anxiety of middle-class whites that nothing was as it appeared,

reminded, by a deputy, that he had been booked with thousands of dollars on his person, more than enough to post bail. He bought his way out of jail time.

I was scared,” he observed. Unlike his soft-edged mother, Buck and Marie were extraordinarily gifted at instilling fear; their livelihoods depended upon it.