Wyatt Cenac

“I've had shows where, afterwards, people have commented or hoped I would talk more about something in politics or that I would make a joke about Mitch McConnell or something like that.”

“A lot of the things I do deal with my race, but my race is who I am. I'm an American kid who grew up listening to predominantly hip-hop. I will talk about hip-hop as the music I grew up listening to, and I think sometimes people like to put it as, 'Oh, well, he's talking about black things.' And, yeah, they are, but that's my American identity.”

“The majority of the DC and Marvel comic lines are white male characters, and the minute you make Thor a woman or Captain America a black guy, the Internet is filled with hateful comments and people saying, 'That's not what Captain America is supposed to look like.'”

“I was arrested when I was 19 for inciting a riot.”

“I wrote this 12-page 'Luke Cage' comic book for Marvel once, and I got to create a villain. His name was Lone Shark, so there was this running thing of whether it was spelled L-O-A-N or L-O-N-E. I like the idea of 'I'm a lone shark,' and then people are like, 'You are here to collect a debt?'”

“I listen to a lot of Freddie Hubbard.”

“Policing of the disabled and how many deaf people get shot by cops is sort of insane. And it's not talked about.”

“When I'm on the road, museums end up being a place I go to in different cities that is always interesting. Museums and independent record stores.”

“I enjoy 'Life Aquatic.' I think that one, from a visual standpoint, is just such a fun, visual movie to look at, whether it's the shots of the ship cut down the middle, that set where you can see everyone in each of their rooms doing whatever and moving about - something like that, I could watch that on a loop for an hour.”

“Watching something is a personal experience, and I think watching something that is dealing with a heavy subject matter, it's a personal thing.”

“I probably learned more about Marion Barry listening to Chris Rock than I did reading a headline.”

“There are 18,000 police agencies in this country. There's no network requiring them to operate according to the same guidelines.”

“I feel like I've always thought of myself as a comedian.”

“There's so many shows, whether it's 'Last Week Tonight' or 'The Daily Show' or 'Full Frontal' or 'Late Night With Seth Meyers,' that are really doing great stuff talking about what's going on in the world and what's going on with the president, and those stories that everyone winds up talking about, whether on social media or in their jobs.”

“I think, with any topical show, it's very easy to find yourself caught up in the news cycle, and working at 'The Daily Show,' I definitely found myself in that, where we would be talking about the last 24 hours.”

“When I was a kid, I loved really loud things. My grandmother and I went to the Fulton Mall, and I bought a three-piece suit that was paisley. Paisley over the whole suit. I was 6 and thought it was great. My mother took a photo of me in it, sent it to my grandmother, and burned the suit.”

“What's sad is that we can have a reality-television performer for president without incorporating the other aspects of reality television - like voting and voter engagement.”

“I don't do enough movies that I can call it a career. It really is sort of like summer jobs or something like that. It's very much like holiday work as far as, okay, I do it, and I'm there for two weeks and hopefully am working really hard, and then it's done, and I kind of go back to what I was doing before.”

“As long as you walk away from any experience, good or bad, with lessons and things you can take into the next experience, I don't think you can do anything but look back on it with an appreciation.”

“Getting a Grammy nomination for 'Brooklyn' meant a lot, especially because, as an album, it was one that was very personal to me but also one that I self-produced and had gone outside the label.”