A Quote by Richard Pryor

I went to Zimbabwe. I know how white people feel in America now; relaxed! Cause when I heard the police car I knew they weren't coming after me! — © Richard Pryor
I went to Zimbabwe. I know how white people feel in America now; relaxed! Cause when I heard the police car I knew they weren't coming after me!
I feel like Snow White because now I have a bunch of little dwarf friends who love me. I may not know how Scout's overalls feel but I think I know how Snow White's Shoes feel because now I know why Snow White was happy.
I'm actually relaxed onstage. Totally relaxed. It's nice. I feel relaxed in the studio too. I know whether something feels right. If it doesn't, I know how to fix it. Everything has to be in place and if it is you feel good, you feel fulfilled.
We've always had the blame-America crowd. We've always had the hate-America crowd. But we've now had at least two generations of education where this has been indoctrinated into the young skulls full of mush of young people. They've heard how horrible America was back in the days of slavery. They've heard how horrible America treated women. They've heard how horrible every minority group was treated. They've heard how mean-spirited the founders were. They've heard all kinds of literal lies.
When I'm outside the car, I'm just kind of relaxed, hanging out. People tell me I could be more confident outside the car, but when I get in the race car, I don't feel like anybody can beat me.
Do you know when you cross against traffic? You look down the street and see a car coming, but you know you can get across before it gets to you. So even though there’s a DON’T WALK sign, you cross anyway. And there’s always a split second when you turn and see that car coming, and you know that if you don’t continue moving, it will all be over. That’s how I feel a lot of the time. I know I’ll make it across. I always make it across. But the car is always there, and I always stop to watch it coming.
It's when I'm playing a headline show I feel weird, 'cause I don't know how to react to people coming out to see me.
When I heard the truth about my name was not Cassius Clay, like I knew a black man in America named John Hawkins. Now, you know who John Hawkins was.He was a slave trader from England. But the white people of that time, if one had five slaves and his name was Jones, they would be called Jones' property. [...] Now that I'm free, now that I'm no longer a slave, then I want a name of my ancestors.
When you're a person of color in white America, you know white people. You know why you know white people? Because you can't enjoy any kind of entertainment if you are not able to humanize white people. If you watch a film and are like, "Oh, this has white people in it? Then I'm not interested," then you can't enjoy anything in America!
She was perfect. I knew this the moment she emerged from my body, white and wet and wailing. Beyond the requisite ten fingers and ten toes, the beating heart, the lungs inhaling and exhaling oxygen, my daughter knew how to scream. She knew how to make herself heard. She knew how to reach out and latch on. She knew what she needed to do to survive. I didn’t know how it was possible that such perfection could have developed within a body as flawed as my own, but when I looked into her face, I saw that it clearly was.
People ask, 'Why would you cast yourself in your movie?' And, for me, it's more like an achievement that I am now not playing all the parts, you know? Like I was for so long, in all my performances and a lot of my short movies. So, that's where I'm coming from, not out of a kind of actress-y sense of myself. I mean, I don't really see myself as an actress, but more from performance: this is how you make something. You do it yourself. You're in it and you write it. I think I keep doing it that way, 'cause it's my way. It's what makes me feel like I know how to do it.
I know who you are in your heart,' Andres said. 'That's all that matters.' And that was it. That was the moment. Now I knew how I would feel if I ever lost him. That was how you knew love. My mother had told me that. All you had to do was imagine your life without the other person, and if the thought alone made you shiver, then you knew.
I think you have to be extremely strong to be in the police and I couldn't do that at all. I get nervous when a police car is driving past me when I'm in the car, pondering what they're doing or going to.
People sometimes ask me if I would not give anything to be white, I answer, in the words of the song, most emphatically, 'No.' How do I know what I might be if I were a white man? I might be a sand-hog, burrowing away and losing my health for $8 a day. I might be a street-car conductor at $12 or $15 a week. There is many a white man less fortunate and less well equipped than I am. In fact, I have never been able to discover that there was anything disgraceful in being a colored man. But I have often found it inconvenient - in America.
I feel the car, but I think with me and my background of dirt racing and stuff and not having pit stops, you just kind of 'All right, this is how my car is handling, I've got to figure out how to drive it' and then you get a feel of how you want it to feel.
Tell me how you could say such a thing, she said, staring down at the ground beneath her feet. You're not telling me anything I don't know already. 'Relax your body, and the rest of you will lighten up.' What's the point of saying that to me? If I relaxed my body now, I'd fall apart. I've always lived like this, and it's the only way I know how to go on living. If I relaxed for a second, I'd never find my way back. I'd go to pieces, and the pieces would be blown away. Why can't you see that? How can you talk about watching over me if you can't see that?
I could never live with you; not 'cause I'm racist or nothing. It's just 'cause as a black man in America, I need to have someone I can come home and complain about white people to. And that just don't work with my white wife.
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