Quotes from Nipsey Russell

I talk about things that are front page news.

Six good guest shots on top shows during one season are more than enough and any producer who wants to make me happy could offer some floating guest dates for discussion and panel shows. It's generally agreed that I love to talk, so shows of this kind are right down my alley.

Comedy is based partly on mean-spiritedness.

Jack Paar was my first TV patron saint.

If you see me on the street, don't just say, 'There goes Nipsey.' Walk over and say, 'Hello Nipsey,' and give me a warm slap on the back and hand me a few dollars.

I've always had the ability to manipulate words and communicate ideas and thoughts.

As far as television is concerned, I'm just not interested in working on a series. Why should I settle for being someone's second banana? And that weekly grind is unrewarding and too demanding.

For artistic fulfillment I prefer to work live. For career advancement, I go to the media.

The great part of appearing on game shows is that when you answer a question the camera takes a close-up of you every time. You get more close-ups than in a movie, and that's terrific for audience identification. The people have to see you to like you.

There's no money in television, but TV provides the wherewithal to get the dollars for live performances.

America is the only place in the world where you can work in an Arab home in a Scandinavian neighborhood and find a Puerto Rican baby eating matzo balls with chopsticks.

I'm living the life of liberty, happiness and pursuit.

I was so scared the first time I flew the flight attendant called me Whitey.

You see, the patience of an audience is very short, particularly with a non-entity. You're an intruder, and you must make them laugh within three or four seconds. My poems fit the requirements, and I'm always thinking up new ones.

I've dropped a lot of race humor from my routines, not because I think it is in bad taste, but because I don't want to be guilty of telling old jokes.

One character mistook me for the model and remarked 'That Man-Tan sure works wonders!' That ain't Man-Tan. I'm tan, man. From my head to my toes.

I use mother-in-law jokes, kid jokes, tax jokes - anything that works.

I haven't got a Cadillac. I've got a subway token.

I feel the life expectancy of a comedian is 30 seconds. If you don't hook an audience in half-a-minute, you're dead.

I knew racial discrimination at its worst in the 1930s. I lived with the humility of it but I never lost my sense of humor. Humor is the escape valve from the deadly reality of adversity.

I used to say, 'We've always had integration in the South... we just want it now in the daytime.

I start with the joke line and write backward.

Divorces are getting so common that a woman I know doesn't bother getting a new marriage license. They just punch her old one and give her a transfer. You can't teach an old dog new tricks - so she keeps changing dogs.

During all the years I entertained at the Baby Grand night club in Harlem, 90 percent of the audience was white. But when I tried to break Into television, I was told that white folks wouldn't understand what I was talking about.