Tony Rock

“I went to a wedding in St. Maarten, and we took a boat ride over to Anguilla for a day. We went to a beach that had the whitest sand I had ever seen before in my life. I was in the water up to the middle of my chest and could still see my feet. It was the clearest water.”

“Trouble was almost inevitable. I grew up with so many at-risk kids. Kids had things go wrong.”

“You got to be willing to be knocked out to win a fight. You got to be willing to get booed off the stage to get a standing ovation.”

“Nothing's given in the Rock family.”

“Women do so much aesthetically to attract men that they sometimes overlook the simple things, like cooking.”

“My older brothers have their own children, and they have to go to soccer practice and football practice on the weekends. They're doing their thing and on the weekends, and I'm on the road. The busier we get, the less time we get to see each other. That's why, when we see each other, it's really, really kind of special.”

“Once school let out every year, my siblings and I would get packed into a station wagon to drive to South Carolina to see my grandparents for summer vacation. If school let out on Friday, we were probably in the station wagon no later than Sunday morning, and we would make stops along the way.”

“You know why kids don't eat fruits? Because fruits don't have any mascots. Every sugary cereal has a bear or a rabbit going , 'Kid! Eat it! Eat it, eat it, eat it!' You're a kid, you're like, 'I got to get that cereal.'”

“'All Def' is unlike any other comedy show or set because 'All Def' goes back to the essence of how urban comedy started. We give it a 'stoop appeal.' A stoop appeal is important for us because it's where pretty much all black comics started doing their standup: cracking jokes on the stoop, in the hood.”

“My father drove a truck, and my mother was a school teacher. They wanted their children to go the traditional route: get good grades, go to college, get a job.”

“If my sisters like something I do, then I'm very happy with it. I only listen to my sisters!”

“New York is home. It's so unique that there is no other place like it.”

“I saw my father every day of my childhood.”

“I have seven brothers and two sisters, so there was always a little friendly competition in the house. I don't think that's anything unusual with that many siblings.”

“We weren't rich by any means, but we had each other, so we were rich in family. When you don't have a lot, it just fuels that creativity. So it manifested in us doing characters of people in the neighborhood or doing impersonations of Mom and Dad. The comedy bug, it takes over.”

“I can make anything in the room funny in a few seconds.”

“I don't understand why black people feel this undying need to want to be down with white people all the time.”

“My first stand-up experience, like most comics, was horrible. I got booed offstage. I thought I was funnier than I was. But the walk from the back of the room to the stage was the most excited I'd ever been about anything in my life other than kissing a girl. That's how I knew I had to get back onstage and do it again.”

“My family is just naturally funny.”

“Who's been loyal to a Kardashain?”