Hannibal Buress

“I'm in awful shape. I'm trying to get in better shape. My girlfriend, she's in good shape. She gives me health tips sometimes, like, 'Hannibal, you're going to die.' Stuff like that.”

“I think people overplay the 'Saturday Night Live' schedule. I mean, yeah, it can be some late hours. But the late hours are usually only one or two nights out of the week. You might have a crazy six-day week, but you'll work three weeks, and then you get a week off work. I'd take most jobs if it was hard work and then I got a week off.”

“I need to have something else going on. I'm able to write a lot if I have an episode of 'Friday Night Lights' going on my computer.”

“I'd like to get more bit-acting roles. I don't know if my talent would allow for a long dialogue, but I could definitely knock out three lines. I'd kill it.”

“Comedy is basically self-deprecation.”

“I just wear black and gray all the time. If you Google Image me, you'll just see a bunch of black and gray. It's simple. If I like a shirt, I'll buy six or eight of them, wear them back-to-back, and just wait for somebody to say something. 'That's the same shirt you wore yesterday.' 'Yeah, but this one is fresh.'”

“I had a sketch called 'Fedora Basketball,' which was about basketball players having to wear hats; in addition to scoring points, they have to make sure their fedoras don't fall off.”

“I like getting 'Times' articles online. But the actual paper just has too many words.”

“Dave Chappelle is one of my comedic inspirations. His perspective is crazy, and he's super sharp.”

“There's been times where I sold the place out, and I walked in and the guy's like, 'Uh, ID?' 'No, you can't ID me, man. I just sold this place out.' People are just doing their jobs, but I think if you're working the door at a venue where there's a headliner, you should at least be like, 'OK, this is the dude.'”

“Every guy should own one good pair of jeans.”

“I haven't really tried to write a movie. It's tough to get into that mode.”

“Before I did comedy, I'd freestyle with all of my friends. In high school and into college, I recorded songs with my friends, not to perform but just to play for them. So I've had interest in music for a while. Early on, I'd host a lot of music open nights or hip-hop nights, so a lot of my early experience performing was around music.”

“I did not move to New York with a plan. The first time I moved to New York, I just popped up. My sister was living here in New York. I just popped up. She had her baby and a husband, and I just popped up. 'Hey, what's up? I got $200 and dreams. Let's do this.'”

“You forget that sometimes comedy is just a big night out for people. Almost every show, people come up to me and go, 'This is the first comedy show I've ever seen,' so you want to do well. If you do horribly at somebody's first time seeing live stand-up, well, you've not only tainted yourself, you've tainted a whole art form.”

“My first time on TV doing stand-up, I actually did this show in Holland called 'The Comedy Factory' hosted by Jorgen Raymann. It was in 2006 in Holland. It was amazing. I had only been doing stand-up for four years, and I booked that gig through the Just For Laughs Montreal festival, and they flew me out and put me up.”

“People like to compare something to something that they know. Even with Chris Rock, they say he's like Richard Pryor or Eddie Murphy.”

“I'd like to be remembered as good person and as one of the best comedians of my generation.”

“I go to a lot of rap shows and sometimes take what they do from a performer's aspect, how they interact with the crowd. I always have a DJ with me on the road, as well as some dancers.”

“I did a 'Last Comic Standing' audition in 2006, where you're just performing for three people in a comedy club, in a big comedy club, and I remember them cutting me off, asking about my name in the middle of one of my jokes. Yeah, it's just real weird when you're doing stand-up in that type of sterile, unnatural setting.”