Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip (1982)

Richard Pryor: Self

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Quotes 

• Richard Pryor : [discussing his trip to Africa]  One thing I got out of it is magic, I'd like to share with you. You know, it's like I was leavin' and I was sittin' in the hotel and a voice said to me, it said to me, "Look around, what do you see?" And I said, "I see all colors of people doin' everything." You know, and the voice said, "Do you see any niggers?" I said, "No." And it said, "You know why? 'Cause there aren't any."

• Richard Pryor : I tell you one thing, man, when that fire hits your ass, that will sober your ass up *quick*! I mean, I was standing there on fire and then something said, "Well, that's a pretty blue. You know what? That looks like *fire*!" I'm talkin' about fire is inspirational. They should use it in the Olympics, because I did the 100 dash in 4-3. And you know somethin' I found out? When you on fire and runnin' down the street, people will get out of your way.

• Richard Pryor : I went to penitentiary, Gene Wilder, I did a movie, I went to - not me personally - you know, I went to do a film in a penitentiary. I was up there six weeks. Arizona State Penitentiary. it was something. Oh, you're applauding for that? Arizona State Penitentiary real popular? Oh, man, it was strange; because, it's like 80% Black people. And what's strange about that is that there aren't no Black people in Arizona. I'm not lyin'. They bus motherfuckers in!

• Richard Pryor : There are only two pieces of pussy you're gonna get in your entire life: that's your first and your last.

• Richard Pryor : [When comparing lions in the zoo to ones hanging out in the jungles of Africa]  When you see a pride of lions just hanging out, they have a different rhythm. They'd be like...

  [then imitates a lion just sitting there looking at, assumingly, a car or truck with sightseers in it] 

  Richard Pryor : Yeah, get your ass out of the car. Yeah, bring the camera, too. 'Cause, we'll eat all that shit.

• Richard Pryor : Listen to me, of all the people you ever heard of freebasin', have you ever heard of anybody blowin' up? Why me? Ten million motherfuckers freebase, I got to blow up.

• Richard Pryor : So Black people - we the first people who had thought, right? We was the first ones to say, "Where the fuck am I, and how do you get to Detroit?"

• [first lines] 

  Emcee : Ladies and Gentlemen, live on the Sunset Strip: Richard Pryor.

  Richard Pryor : We are gathered here, today, to make sure everyone eats. If not each other, food.

• Richard Pryor : One of the advantages when you're in show business, the little extra treat you get is that you get pussy. And, no, you know 'The Great Pussy Drop' of the 50s? I was caught up in that motherfucker.

• Richard Pryor : I discovered masturbating by accident. I'm not lying. I was about 10. I was in the tub and that's wen you used to actually hold your dick with two fingers. You remember when you was little? Right. I was in the tub. Na-na-na-na. "Say, hey! I'm on to somethin' here. I bet Dad don't know about this."

• Richard Pryor : There is not enough fuckin' goin' on in America. Americans, when Reagan get in, you stopped fuckin'. We fucked when Carter was in. We fucked all the time. Just had to. There was nothin' else to do. "Hey, let's fuck." President makin' a speech. "Let's fuck." Reagan in now, everybody listens to this motherfucker. "We can't fuck now." I say, get them last few fucks in now.

• Richard Pryor : I was going to talk about somethin', that's very serious, and I hope no one gets offended. I want to talk about fucking. And sometimes I talk about it and a lot of people in the audience don't know what I mean. So, would you raise your hand, if you don't know what fucking is.

• Richard Pryor : I don't fuck around any more since I got married. I am married. I don't fuck around.

  [looks around] 

  Richard Pryor : That's right. When you are married, say you don't fuck around, if you got any brains. My wife, "Did you fuck her?" "No, I was not fucking her. I don't care what you think you saw. I was not fucking her. Now, are you gonna believe me or your lyin' eyes?"

• Richard Pryor : I remember one time I got some Playboy Bunny pussy. I thought I was in the big time. Goin' home with a Playboy Bunny! You dig? We was going to to have nice little midnight snack. I went to her apartment. It was wonderful. Her apartment was bad! It was one of them apartments that if I don't get the pussy, I can fuck this couch.

• Richard Pryor : My wife has been puttin' up with me. I mean, we went together for six years before the bitch landed me. Cause she paid dues. Cause I am no day at the beach. I know I'm hard to get along with. I know that.

• Richard Pryor : This is my fourth, fifth, sixth, eighth marriage, I don't know. But, I remember every woman that I was ever in love with. I remember all 12 of 'em. I really do. They were wonderful! It's just, I don't, I've never been able to - what you call a sustained relationship, that's what it's called now. In other words, when want to stop bein' with the motherfucker, you leave. That's what I do.

• Richard Pryor : He was doin' a sentence: triple life. How in the fuck do you do triple life? I mean, that mean if he die and come back, he got to go to penitentiary. Right? Then, they say, "Fuck kindergarten, get your little ass back in the penitentiary, motherfucker."

• Richard Pryor : This is about the time I've been married and its really exciting. Because, I really am trying. I *really* *am* *trying*. I'm tellin' you, I'm fuckin' tryin'. Okay? But, it's hard to wake up and see the same person *all" *the* *fuckin'* *time*.

• Richard Pryor : [talking about filming at a prison]  Gene Wilder loved to jump in the middle of the killers and start talkin', "Hi guys! How ya doin'?" I said, "Gene, bring your ass out." "What do you think they'd do to us if we were here, Rich?" I say, "Fuck us." And Gene said, "I'm not homosexual." "Homosexual ain't got nothin' to do with it. They don't fuck you 'cause you like it. They just fuck you just to see that look on your face."

• Richard Pryor : All these beautiful black men in the joint. God damn! Warriors! You should be out there helpin' the masses! And I felt that way. I was real naive. Right? Six weeks I was up there. I *talked* to the brothers, you know, and I talked the 'em and thank God we got penitentiaries. I asked this dude, "Why did you kill everybody in the house?" The guy said, "They was home."

• Richard Pryor : You live around white people in the country, anything can happen. Not that I don't trust white people, it's just that in the night, you know what I mean? I don't know. Somethin' happens to white people when you start drinkin' and when you hear one of those motherfuckers go, "Yee haw!" You know what I mean? I mean, it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Cause I know what's next. After, "Yee Haw!" - you get a rope and get a black motherfucker.

• Richard Pryor : If you wasn't poor, you couldn't get no pussy. Say, we fucked just to keep our minds off of eatin'.

• Richard Pryor : In the penitentiary, man, they got all them racists group. You got the white groups. Hate. They act like they're in New York. They got the Nazi party and the, what you call it, the Ku Klux Klan. The Mexicans got them gangs you can't pronounce the names. And they don't wear not shirts. Black people the Mau Mau. The Muslims. Double Muslims. Thems the ones you don't fuck with, them Double Muslims. Cause them motherfuckers can't wait to get to Allah - and want to take eight or nine motherfuckers with 'em.

• Richard Pryor : Racisms a bitch. I mean, white people, you got to know. It fucks you up. But, what it does to black people is a bitch. Because, no matter what it - it's hard enough being a human being. It's really fuckin' hard enough just to be that. Like, just to go through every day life without murderin' a motherfucker, it's hard enough just to walk through life, decent, as a person. But, here, in another element added to it when your black and, mama, got that little edge on it. It's enough to make you *crazy*.

• Richard Pryor : Nothing like goin' and seein' nothin' but *black*. Black people. I mean, from the wino to the President. It's black people.

• Richard Pryor : I went home to the motherland. Everybody should go home - to Africa. Everybody, especially black people. Really man, there is so much to see there - for the eye and the heart of your black people.

• Richard Pryor : We picked up a hitchhiker one day. An African man got in the car and he had that *oder*. You know, I mean, this mother had "Oh dear1'

• Richard Pryor : All Italian people are not in the mafia, whether you believe it or not. They're not. Really. Most of them *work* for the mafia; but, they're all not in the mafia.

• Richard Pryor : This bitch was fine, man. I'm not lyin'. Lena Horne didn't have *shit* on her.

• Richard Pryor : Dope dealers don't give a fuck about nothin' usually, people think. These motherfuckers refused to sell me cocaine. They'd say, "No, motherfucker, you killin' yourself!" What? "Man, I don't want to see you fuck yourself up." Now, I ain't never heard a dope dealer doin' that. I mean, you can sooner get free food in a Chinese restaurant.

• Richard Pryor : I'm gonna tell you all the truth, tonight. Okay? You got to promise not to tell nobody. Can I trust you?

  [audience yells: Yeah!] 

  Richard Pryor : You some lyin' motherfuckers.

• Richard Pryor : [as Mudbone]  So, what I'm sayin' - what the point I'm tryin' to make is that there is no point to be made. That's all there is. There ain't no point to it. Cause you didn't have to come to this motherfucker and you sure can't choose how to leave. Cause you don't know when you gonna go. So, don't take this shit serious. You better have fun and plenty of it. Cause when the shit over and you ask for a recharge, its too late. So, all I can say is keep some sunshine on your face.

• Richard Pryor : One time, it looked like I had an appendage on my hand - was a pipe. Cause this pipe used to tell me when to go to bed. The pipe would say, "Time to get up. Time for some smoke, Rich. Come on now. We're not going to do anything today. Fuck all of your appointments. Me and you just going to hang out in this room together." And I'd get mad and frustrated. People didn't understand me and the pipe would say, "Come in the room with me. I've got you covered. I know how you feel, Rich. I understand. Just light me up, hold me for a couple of days, and we'll talk it over."

• Richard Pryor : I thank God every day, jack. I do. I say, "God, thank you for not burning my dick." Some people said, "You've been punished by God!" I say, "No. If God were to punish my ass, he'd a burnt my dick." Now, that's some punishment.

• Richard Pryor : It's a weird disease, if any of you people out there doin' it, I know you ain't gonna believe this; but, if you been doin' it longer than two weeks, you're a junkie. I'm tellin' you and I'm tellin' you so you'll know it. And I know you'll tell yourself, "I ain't no fuckin' junkie. Nothin hooks me." But, you cannot stop if you wanted to. You'll go home tonight and say, "Watch it." You will not be able to. If you got the shit there, you will do it.

• Richard Pryor : My wife is white and the first two years we went together she thought her name was "white honky bitch".

• Richard Pryor : If you're in an argument with another man, he maybe white, but its man on man, for a minute, and the shit get rough, he end up callin' you: nigger! You got to go, "Ah, shit. Fuck! Now, I ain't no man no more. I'm nigger. Now, I got to argue with that shit. Fuck, throw my balance all off, man." You know, it's an ugly thing. I hope someday they give it up.

• Richard Pryor : I ain't ever gonna call another black man: nigger. You know, cause we never was no niggers. That's a word that's used to describe our own wretchedness and we perpetuate it now. 'Cause it's dead. That word's dead. We men and women, we come from - we come from the first people on earth! You know, the first people on earth were black people!

• Richard Pryor : I don't want them hip, white people comin' up to me callin' me no nigger or tellin' me nigger jokes. I don't like it. I'm just tellin' ya, its uncomfortable to me. I don't like it when black people say it to me. I really don't no more. It's nothin'. It don't mean nothin'.

• Richard Pryor : [14:07]  I know I'm hard to get along with, because I might wake up and go, "hey! Wake up! What was that shit you said last February?".

• Richard Pryor : [20:12]  Men cannot graduate until a woman break your fuckin' heart. That is your diploma.

• Richard Pryor : Women are so cool about sex. They like it as much as we do, but, they can be cooler. When you say, "You wanna fuck?" "No." And they go home and have all that electrical equipment.