Pryor Convictions And Other Life Sentences
This guy led a seriously wild life and I am sure that not even a few percent of his hellraising is documented in this book. He’s clearly funny, but also tragic—in many ways a product of his upbringing, where he came from and his childhood experiences as well as the choices he made for himself. I want to go and listen to the albums as I'm sure I've never really heard the best of him.
Quick as lightning, she reached out with her finger claws and swiped at my father’s dick. Ripped his nutsack off.
But the circumstances surrounding my birth seem obvious. My dad wanted the pussy. My mother had the pussy.
Only two restaurants and two movie theaters in town served people of color, and if a black man wanted a hotel room for the night, he had to find it elsewhere.
When I was a kid, I found a baby in a shoe box—dead. An accident to some, I was luckier than others, and that was just the way it was.
After one night with Dick, I came home fairly well fucked up. Not a great idea in the building where I lived because it was a strange place if you weren't careful. For instance, the elevator had a mind of it's own. If you pushed 3, you ended up in the basement. If you pushed basement, you were fucked.
After posting bail, I got in my car and drove home and found out my daughter Elizabeth had been born. Congratulations, Rich. But you didn't care, did you?
Well, to be honest, not that much.
“What I’m saying might be profane,” I explained. “But it’s also profound.”
Dr. Leakey, a white anthropologist—which I have to say so white people will believe me—he found remains of a man that stood up and walked on earth 5 million years ago. You know that motherfucker didn’t speak French.
That was nice, Mama, wasn’t it?
I want to die like my father. He died fucking. He was fifty-seven. The woman was eighteen. He came and went at the same time.
When a man hits a woman one of two things happens: either she hauls ass in the opposite direction or she becomes yours.
Violence is like voodoo. The sting is like a hex. You become possessed by each other. Locked in a diabolic dance.
We’re all just people.
We’re all the same.
What else I found out in Africa is the fact that aside from us being the original people, so are the white people.
We all family.
That’s it, Jack. And fuck all that other shit.
I also left regretting ever having uttered the word “nigger” on a stage or off it. It was a wretched word. Its connotations weren’t funny, even when people laughed. To this day I wish I’d never said the word.
So I come out and went for this audition. Motherfucker said it was for King Kong. He gave me the script. I didn’t know what the story was. King Kong. I said, “I don’t mind being a king. Shit, that’s a pretty good part. Change the motherfucker’s last name, you know, to Williams or somebody. A little too Chinese for me, that Kong shit.”
The director said, “I don’t believe you understand. What I’m trying to say is that this is a movie about a gorilla.”
I replied, “Well, you got the wrong nigger, motherfucker. I ain’t no motherfucking gorilla. And I don’t appreciate you calling me to this audition.”
They called an ambulance. Told them to get into the ghetto quick. Told them a white woman had been shot.
Women get their heart broke, they cry.
Men don’t do that. Men hold it in like it don’t hurt. They walk around and get hit by trucks.
One of the scariest things in life is to get what you wish for.
In a terribly ominous, ironic forewarning of the calamity that lay ahead, I started a fire that first time I freebased at home.
A long, Frankenstein scar ran down the center of my chest like a receipt from the grocery store.
Life is all there is.
Found this line heartbreaking. Sudden change of narrative where he addresses his grandmother about a time they spent together fishing while he kept himself clean.