J. B. Smoove

Sometimes you can make friends, and sometimes you can take friends. Sometimes people want to be friends with you, and you gotta be like, 'Okay, I can deal with this person's personality and be their friend, but not necessarily do I have to change who I am. I'm not gonna change myself to be their friend.'

I'm street smart. You can't con me. But that's just from living in New York. Now if a guy came from Mississippi somewhere, Ohio somewhere, to New York City for the first time, he don't have the street smarts. You can take him.

You don't want to take the world over with a whole hamper full of dirty clothes. That's the main thing people overlook. And take a shower, take a bath every day.

I'm afraid one thing - I don't like heights. Heights bug me out. I'm not cool with heights. I refuse to do a comedy show 12 stories up. I'm fearless about everything else.

I'm sure back in the Greek days or the Roman Empire days, when guys fought in arenas and were fighting lions, people were talking smack. Every era in history has someone talking smack. No way you can have talent and not proclaim your victory.

I drive a big Dodge truck. I drive American cars.

When you speak directly at things and don't say you're going to try to do something or that you hope to do something, the universe will work with you. Think about it this way - a boomerang goes out and comes back to you if you throw it. If you throw it out at the universe, it will come back down to you on Earth.

Being a parent is about your survival. Surviving the terrible two's is the most important thing.

Kids love me. I can bounce back and forth. I can discipline kids, and I can get into the mind of a kid. In my brain, I consider myself the ultimate video game player. The ultimate snack maker.

I should be European, man. I'm long and lean. I'd look good in a trench coat.

People love things about Hollywood. People love to see the inside of what's going on.

To be a true comic, you have to have a signature move. You ever watch wrestling? And your favorite wrestler has the one move that he always does to finish his opponent off, right? Like when he climbs on the rope, and he always jumps off the top rope and finishes off his opponent - that's what a comic has.

It's great when a director like Cameron Crowe can take what you do and fit it into what he's doing. If someone's a fan of you already, they can take what you do and make it work for what they're doing. You don't know their vision, and you're thinking, 'How is this guy going to take what I do and make it work in this movie?'

Some of the best dramatic actors have started in comedy.

When you're babysitting a kid, all you're seeing is a version of them, a small dosage.

You want your lady to be a contortionist. What man wouldn't want a lady who's a contortionist?

I have to satisfy my audience.

A lot of comedians are selfish.

I'm on my version of the protein diet, but there ain't no protein in it. It's a Krispy Kreme doughnut between two Cinnabons. And you soak it overnight in Red Bull. Then you chase it with a Snickers.

I try to dress smooth, I try to keep my face shaved, I try to keep my head cut. I try to do all the things to keep it smooth going!

All you wanna do in life is do what you do well. That's when you're happiest.

You gotta improvise in life. You gotta improv if the police pull you over.

What happens in improv is you create your own storyline.

I may even show up behind the camera. I love to put things together; I love to give direction. I have a great eye for pace.

For me, standup will always be some part of my life, and other things will move around and find their place.

Live TV has an amazing pace to it. You've got to be able to think quick, make changes last minute, and be funny and fast.

Mel Gibson is losing it. I don't know how people still supporting this dude's movies like it's all good. That dude is nuts. All you gotta do is shut him down and don't support any of his movies.

Improv relies just as much on listening as it does you delivering dialogue. That's the hard for some people. Some people just concentrate on what they're going to say, and they're not listening. You have to listen in order to see where the other person is going to.

I wouldn't want to be someone's roommate, that's for sure. You can't do certain things: you can't leave the bathroom door open... you can't put your feet on the couch, you can't hide stuff in the couch.

Before I got into stand-up, I used to be a hip-hop dancer in a crew, and my name was J. Smoove, and my partner was J. Groove.

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.

When I started stand-up, the first thing I did was to take an improv class.

I thought 'Pineapple Express' was hilarious.

If a director brings a guy to their movie who does improv, they've got to let him do what he does - otherwise it's like bringing Michael Jordan to your basketball team and telling him to just pass the ball and don't shoot.

If your boss asks you why you're comin' in late, you say it's 'cause you stayed late.

It's not even race; it's a certain type of person that gets 'Pootie Tang.'

I don't like to dabble in anything I don't do well. I don't talk politics.

I steal scenes, I steal opportunities. I am the ultimate thief. I got sticky fingers, man. They all call me The Thief.

I've done everything. Selling door-to-door fire extinguishers... In bars, I used to repair those machines that have 10 different buttons on them to spray club soda and seltzer.

I loved Peter Sellers. I thought he was the perfect mix of physical comedy with out-of-the-box humor. I loved his tone; I loved his physicality; I loved everything about what he was doing as a comedic actor.

I was the hallway clown in high school.

'The ruckus' is different experiences you go through throughout your life which builds your ruckus points up - your tolerance. You've got to have a high tolerance for dealing with stuff all the time.

You buy a new iPhone, a few months later, another new iPhone comes out, and you get online to buy another one. You can't get enough. You are addicted to Apple.

I have big hands. I can't do the touch-screen thing. I'm a button guy. I want to press buttons.

I'm, like, everybody's friend. I'm one of those dudes. I can be friends with anybody. Any race of person, any personality, I can kind of deal with them. I accept different types of people.

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.

It's an ongoing joke that a black man is always the first one to get killed in movies.

You know how you put peanut butter on a piece of bread and the bread falls - it never falls on the bread side down, it always falls peanut butter side down. That's because of gravity.

I believe, even when I'm doing my standup or my acting or whatever I'm doing, I believe in painting pictures.

Police blog or entertainment news, it's just good to see your name in print.