Quotes from Tony Rock

You can live with diabetes. It's not the worst thing to have, but you have to manage yourself and have some self control.

If you enjoy and become a fan of Tony Rock, I really appreciate it! But, I do my comedy for me, so I don't try and please everyone or appease anyone. In the end, it's for me.

My brother nurtured the love of stand-up comedy in a skinny little black kid named Tony.

If you're at the Comedy Store or the Laugh Factory or the Improv, even two minutes helps. You never know who might be in the audience.

Trouble was almost inevitable. I grew up with so many at-risk kids. Kids had things go wrong.

If my sisters like something I do, then I'm very happy with it. I only listen to my sisters!

I'm a skinny kid from Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.

I was on the school bus telling Richard Pryor jokes. I was sneaking, listening to Richard Pryor albums and would go to school the next day, tell all the jokes, and get in trouble because I was cursing.

I never knew I was poor until I got older because we just had so much fun. I thought everyone had grilled cheese night and that everyone had Cup-O-Noodles for dinner on Fridays.

My father drove a truck, and my mother was a school teacher. They wanted their children to go the traditional route: get good grades, go to college, get a job.

We weren't rich by any means, but we had each other, so we were rich in family. When you don't have a lot, it just fuels that creativity. So it manifested in us doing characters of people in the neighborhood or doing impersonations of Mom and Dad. The comedy bug, it takes over.

I know I'm going to be doing standup for the rest of my life.

I have seven brothers and sisters, and they could all be standup comics!

When you're doing standup, it's just you. It's your written jokes. You perform it however your personality is.

Never steal jokes.

I have seven brothers and two sisters, so there was always a little friendly competition in the house. I don't think that's anything unusual with that many siblings.

'All Def' is unlike any other comedy show or set because 'All Def' goes back to the essence of how urban comedy started. We give it a 'stoop appeal.' A stoop appeal is important for us because it's where pretty much all black comics started doing their standup: cracking jokes on the stoop, in the hood.

I talk to the audience like I talk to my friends on the stoop.

Like everybody, I started out doing 'bringer' shows - the kind where if you show up with a certain number of people, you get to perform. Sometimes I would actually pay strangers off the street to come in and see my set.

I talk about everything - politics, the economy; the news will give you more material than you can ever use. But relationships? That's the ongoing battle. You talk about men and women, and across-the-board everyone can relate to that.

My first stand-up experience, like most comics, was horrible. I got booed offstage. I thought I was funnier than I was. But the walk from the back of the room to the stage was the most excited I'd ever been about anything in my life other than kissing a girl. That's how I knew I had to get back onstage and do it again.

Every time I go onstage, it's a little less 'Chris Rock's brother.'

I love to eat. I'm a foodie, and when I'm on vacation, I want to be a foodie with their culture, with their foods.

People say an Oscar validates your career. No, it doesn't. There's more good actors without Oscars than there are with Oscars.