Larry Wilmore

I have this rule. It's called 'Top Dog-Underdog:' Underdog gets to make fun of Top Dog, but Top Dog can't make fun of Underdog. But you know what? You get Top Dog, you get to be Top Dog. Congratulations! And that dynamic happens not just in race but in many different ways. It's like the male-female dynamic.

I just feel it's important to make sure that behind the scenes is as filled with diverse voices as in front of the scene is.

Remember, MTV would only show white videos for a long time. Can you imagine that? That was the '80s when that happened. It's hard to even think of that now, you know?

I'm actually a big fan of having all the different types of voices on television. I think it gives people a nice little buffet that they can just pick and choose how they want to get their news and entertainment, I guess.

I really love storytelling.

I'd love to set up shop somewhere and develop projects - film, TV, digital would be a fun thing to do.

All writers have a love-hate relationship with writing. Performing is fun, too, but I wouldn't say it's my favorite. But the most fulfilling is producing.

Writing is the most frustrating, but it's something that I've always done.

I've always watched the political shows.

I set out to have a diverse staff on the 'Bernie Mac Show.'

We had a segment called Tampon Tuesdays that I was very proud of; that was hilarious because there are a lot of women's issues out there that a lot of people don't know about because they're not women, and they don't have to go through them.

The thing that's worked for me is having as much of a connection to the material as possible. And sometimes the material requires a more straightforward approach, and sometimes it requires a little more silliness, you know?

I didn't get into comedy to talk about violent death all the time.

I love the word 'dearth,' by the way. It's one of my favorite words.

I'll stop talking about race when people stop being racist.

The last thing I would ever do is try to become a network programmer.

Maybe I'll write an episode of 'Black-ish' about a guy being fired in late-night.

I really love having conversations and deconstructing things. I don't mind not having a laugh every second. Sometimes things deserve a little more discussion, and then you can have some fun after that.

I like 'The Nightly Show.' People ask me what it is, and I say, 'If you're watching 'The Daily Show,' and it feels like it's getting a little darker, you're probably watching 'The Nightly Show.''

I get recognized by some people in my community, but not a lot. In fact, they would say, 'What do you do?' And I would say, 'Well, I did 'The Bernie Mac Show.'' And they would say, 'Oh, really? Well, do you know so-and-so?' And I'd say, 'Yeah, I hired them. I was the boss!' They don't believe it.

My joke is that three black people watch 'The Daily Show' at any given time. So if I'm watching it, that counts, and there's only two left. It's a silly joke, but you know, different types of comedy reach different cultures.

I think the biggest thing is voice. Whose voice is it? Who gets to control the narrative?

'Westworld' is bizarre. I don't know what to think of 'Westworld.'

You are always, always overwhelmed by positive response because you know it can go either way.

I'd rather go after the people who are the guardians or what we're doing - the news people and the politicians and that sort of thing. I always feel like those should be my targets, not really entertainers. That's just my personal opinion.

Some things are so tragic that you don't know what's funny in it, and some things are so ridiculous you don't know if it's worth talking about it.

I have a lot of passion for a lot of different things.

I'm understated in my approach.

No matter what his crimes were, Alton Sterling did not deserve to be executed for them. Look, guys, the punishment for resisting arrest shouldn't be death. The punishment for selling bootleg CDs shouldn't be death. The punishment for having a gun in an open-carry state shouldn't be death. The punishment for being a black man shouldn't be death.

I really don't have a need to be on TV all that much, to be honest with you.

I'm not really a self-promoter-type person.

When most people become president, even if you disagree with their ideology, you can still agree that they would have the competence to run something... With Trump, I do not have the confidence of that at all.

You never want to defend a joke. People get to choose whether or not to laugh and whether or not they think something is funny.

My white counterparts are always pushing the line, and they are fearless, so why can't I do that, too?

Any voting group has an interest that they want from politicians. That's why politicians have to talk to different people. But to reduce the black interest to free stuff is so insulting. It just makes me apoplectic.

I was taught from a very early age that I had to work twice as hard to get half as much. That was the world I grew up in - a very strong work ethic.

When you have somebody like a Donald Trump - he made no bones about trying to disprove Barack Obama's Americanism in trying to make him out to be some foreigner that was born in Kenya. I thought that to be very racist.

It's really not my thing to go after what comedians are doing. Because I always feel like we're jesters at the end of the day.

There's something about a new family moving into the White House that's kind of interesting, even if you didn't vote for them.

MSNBC got rid of so many black people, I thought Boko Haram was running that network.

I've pitched many things that have not gone, but every year, I'm in that pilot game like a lot of other writers in Hollywood.

Richard Pryor was my hero. Richard Pryor was keeping it 100.

As long as you say I'm the guy who's real about it, I have no problem being the person who people look to to talk about race.

I do not look to Hollywood to give me character clues.

You never know in TV - sometimes you're on at the wrong time at the wrong place. Sometimes you don't get a chance to catch on.

Every television show is sentenced to death - time and date of execution unknown.

Not everybody's gonna get your vision.

Even though you're in charge, you're not completely in ownership. You know, the audience takes a huge ownership of your show. Look at comments about shows and tell me if I'm wrong. Look at shows like 'The Walking Dead' and the ownership that the audience has of that show.

When you work in television, you're in the writer's room all the time.

My father had a lot of allergies, and he just didn't like the cold of Chicago, and his father - his parents had broken up when he was young, and his father had lived in Pasadena for a while, and he kind of fell in love with Southern California.