Nipsey Russell quotes

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.

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.

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.

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.

Real progress will have been made when people don't care or even notice the color of a comedian when they'll just be concerned with whether he's funny.

In all my years in show business - on stage, clubs and TV shows - my audience has been 75 percent white. In Las Vegas and Atlantic City I look out at the crowd and only see a few black faces here and there. But I can't allow myself to be conscious of the race factor. I couldn't perform my best under those conditions.