Hannibal Buress Quotes

I like Louis C.K., Chris Rock. Old schools like Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy.

On the comedy side of what I love as a filmmaker are Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce, and Eddie Murphy; those are my favorites.

I think in my case, I had no choice but to have a good sense of humor. I grew up with my dad, Danny Thomas, and George Burns and Bob Hope and Milton Berle and Sid Caesar and all those guys were at our house all the time and telling jokes and making each other laugh.

There are comedians who focus on everything that is external. They focus on politics and the news, what's going on in that city and that night.

The reason I do what I do is because I was influenced by Steve Martin, by Woody Allen, by Bob Newhart, by Carol Burnett, by Lucille Ball.

Stand-up comics reflect less of a visual humor and more of a commentary.

If I can make you laugh and learn, I want to be like George Carlin and Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy and Sam Kinison and Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle. I want to be of that ilk, I don't want to just make you laugh, I want to make you think.

I've paid attention to guys growin' up like Richard Pryor or Paul Mooney. The message that they were sending with what they did was so much bigger than them.

I'd decided to write about stuff that I would like to hear standup about.

People like Bill Burr and Jim Gaffigan and Zach Galifianakis and Sarah Silverman - they were all amazing and helpful to me.

I set out to be a cross between Lenny Bruce and Robert the Bruce.

I've always thought stand-up comedians were the oral storytellers of our time, because they know rhetoric, they know delivery, they know timing, they know all of these things that you can only learn by telling a story out loud and interacting with an audience.

When I was younger, I listened to the greats: Winters, Mel and Carl, Nichols and May, Pryor, Carlin, Klein, Berman and lots of Lenny Bruce albums. But once I started doing fairly well, I didn't want to hear anybody's jokes or premises.

Comedians are always hitting the topical notes that are on everybody's minds.

Wrestling was like stand-up comedy for me.

Ever since I was a kid, I just loved those comedians on TV who would just have fun with the language.

The most influential thing was the two Chris Rock specials that came out when I was in high school. I was obsessed with that stuff.

I was heavily influenced by Andy Kaufman and Steven Wright.

Chris Rock is a very funny man.

At the end of the day, I want to be part of the same conversation as Chris Rock, Eddie Murphy, Dave Chappelle, Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor.

I think comedy does have that powerful thing that doesn't seem too preachy because you're also making people laugh, so it's really kind of a good tool for messaging.

As Richard Pryor was to Eddie Murphy, that's what Kurt Vonnegut was to me.

Many of the writers who have inspired me most are outside the genre: Humorists like Robert Benchley and James Thurber, screenwriters like Ben Hecht and William Goldman, and journalists/columnists like H.L. Mencken, Mike Royko and Molly Ivins.

Lewis Black taught me stand-up.

Bill Maher fancies himself the reincarnation of Lenny Bruce.