Carlos Mencia

“I know that if any other comedian came up to me questioning something I did or said, it would be literally settled in a heartbeat. I love comedy. I give to comedy. I don't take from comedy.”

“I'm afraid of being poor; I'm afraid of living in the projects... I'm afraid of being thought as unsuccessful.”

“Ten comics can say the same joke, and I'm the one who gets called a thief.”

“Just because my name is Carlos Mencia, don't think my show is going to be about the difference between Mexicans and white people.”

“I get really nervous at auditions. I know how to make people laugh, but auditions just really make me nervous.”

“The fact that so many comics were waiting to jump on the bandwagon of hate toward me - what is it about me that engages this kind of behavior? I began to see it: My cockiness, my lack of hanging out with other comics. A lot of that wasn't my fault.”

“The United States of America on our worst day is better than any other country on their best day. Period. End of story.”

“I don't think I push boundaries. I find that other people feel that way. To me, it's just about going up there and speaking the truth, whatever that is.”

“I choose to live in a positive world and a positive presence.”

“I believe that my part to play in this world is stand-up.”

“I was never one of those fat-victim people. I always have to address how much weight I lost, and people always realize then how fat I was.”

“I have been recording every single one of my shows since 1994. Every single joke I've ever done is on a hard drive. I can tell you when I wrote every joke I wrote. I can tell you the first time I said it, when I made it different, when I made it better.”

“It's a pleasure to be doing a show for Comedy Central. Traditional networks would cast me as the head of a household with 16 children, which I find extremely offensive because there are 18 kids in my family.”

“The cool thing about going to Vegas is that it's kind of like visiting a bunch of cities all at one time. All the shows and great restaurants leave you with a lot of options.”

“'America is such a great country, we have fat poor people.' It's one of those jokes that doesn't hit people right away, because it's so prevalent that we don't get it.”

“When I was a kid, I was in love with one of the 'Charlie's Angels.' I told my dad, 'I'm going to marry somebody like Cheryl Ladd.' My dad said, 'You're not that good-looking, mijo. You're going to have to make a lot of money if that's what you want.' I went, 'Well, I want that, so I'm going to make money.'”

“The beauty of not growing up middle class is that you don't think like the middle class. You don't have anything to protect, you know what I mean?”

“I always knew I was going to lose weight.”

“Acting is reacting. That's when acting is great - when you say something, somebody said something, they make a face, they pose, they use something physical, then you react to that, then they react to you.”

“If you've never seen me perform live, I'm a must-see. I'm very funny. I have a different perspective sometimes on a lot of what I do and the world itself, especially America.”