My parents are from the Midwest. They're from Evanston, Illinois. They moved out to Los Angeles right before I was born.
Larry Wilmore
Some things are so tragic that you don't know what's funny in it, and some things are so ridiculous you don't know if it's worth talking about it.
The business part of it can be very vexing. You always have to keep certain metrics and everything. Because all I can do is make a good show.
I'm not the type of person to have a schadenfreude.
I really love having conversations and deconstructing things. I don't mind not having a laugh every second. Sometimes things deserve a little more discussion, and then you can have some fun after that.
Writing is the most frustrating, but it's something that I've always done.
I have a lot of passion for a lot of different things.
There's something about a new family moving into the White House that's kind of interesting, even if you didn't vote for them.
I just feel it's important to make sure that behind the scenes is as filled with diverse voices as in front of the scene is.
Even though you're in charge, you're not completely in ownership. You know, the audience takes a huge ownership of your show. Look at comments about shows and tell me if I'm wrong. Look at shows like 'The Walking Dead' and the ownership that the audience has of that show.
I really enjoyed being able to be one of the people who weighed in on the events. As hard as it is to do that every day, because it is exhausting, it really is fun to do that, especially when you feel like you really did something well, and it really hit.
The last thing I would ever do is try to become a network programmer.
One of the missions of 'The Nightly Show' was to have a conversation with America in a sense, and talk about the things that people didn't want to talk about it.
There are tragedies that happen all the time in America, but there are certain types of tragedies that kind of pull us together and make us pause and give us a chance to reflect about where we are, where we're going, and that sort of thing.
I get recognized by some people in my community, but not a lot. In fact, they would say, 'What do you do?' And I would say, 'Well, I did 'The Bernie Mac Show.'' And they would say, 'Oh, really? Well, do you know so-and-so?' And I'd say, 'Yeah, I hired them. I was the boss!' They don't believe it.
Salt Lake City gave me a lot of surprises. How progressive the city actually is, for instance, compared to the rest of Utah - it's like this purple dot in a sea of red. And the government there is kind of a mix of conservative values and progressive ideas.
I've pitched many things that have not gone, but every year, I'm in that pilot game like a lot of other writers in Hollywood.
Remember, MTV would only show white videos for a long time. Can you imagine that? That was the '80s when that happened. It's hard to even think of that now, you know?
We had a segment called Tampon Tuesdays that I was very proud of; that was hilarious because there are a lot of women's issues out there that a lot of people don't know about because they're not women, and they don't have to go through them.
I'm not really a self-promoter-type person.
MSNBC got rid of so many black people, I thought Boko Haram was running that network.
I don't take pleasure in anyone's demise, really.
When you're taking chances, you know it's not going to please everybody.
A lot of my family on both sides have worked in education and nursing, and my grandmother was a nurse; my sister is a nurse, and her - my other sister's daughter is going into nursing. There's a lot of that in the family.
I think the term 'fair reporting' is overused when it comes to journalism. I think saying they want to report evenly is more accurate.
When you have somebody like a Donald Trump - he made no bones about trying to disprove Barack Obama's Americanism in trying to make him out to be some foreigner that was born in Kenya. I thought that to be very racist.
I have a free voice. I have a free mind. I have freedom of expression.
No matter what his crimes were, Alton Sterling did not deserve to be executed for them. Look, guys, the punishment for resisting arrest shouldn't be death. The punishment for selling bootleg CDs shouldn't be death. The punishment for having a gun in an open-carry state shouldn't be death. The punishment for being a black man shouldn't be death.
As a culture, we've all agreed with the opinion that the world should be seen in a certain way, so at 'The Nightly Show,' our chief mission was to disagree with that premise. And to see the world in a way that may not make everybody comfortable. And to present it with a cast of people who don't always get to have a voice on that.
Every television show is sentenced to death - time and date of execution unknown.
I am from Pomona, California. I was born in Los Angeles.
I'll stop talking about race when people stop being racist.
Sometimes I'm successful, and sometimes I'm not, but I don't mind going down trying.
Police have to have one of the most difficult jobs in society today. But at the same time, I think, a person in that position - their responsibility has to be high as well.
I think the biggest thing is voice. Whose voice is it? Who gets to control the narrative?
I guess I hadn't counted on 'The Unblackening' happening to my time slot as well.
My father had a lot of allergies, and he just didn't like the cold of Chicago, and his father - his parents had broken up when he was young, and his father had lived in Pasadena for a while, and he kind of fell in love with Southern California.
I thought Sarah Palin was the ultimate expression of comic outrageousness in a person.
I was taught from a very early age that I had to work twice as hard to get half as much. That was the world I grew up in - a very strong work ethic.
If you look at somebody like Sam Bee, she got to create her own thing without any expectations that there was a show there. That was probably liberating for them.
I didn't even know how much of a feminist I was, and I realized, 'Oh my God, I was raised by a single mom who had to raise six kids. I have three sisters. Larry, you've been a feminist your whole life, and you really didn't know it until you've been presented with these issues.'
The first show I worked on was 'In Living Color.' I think 'The Daily Show' was the culmination of having that point of view - being able to look at this third rail in our society.
Sometimes I'd say what's bad for the country is good for my business, unfortunately.
I would consider myself more a passionate centrist.
Doing a TV show is different because it's more of a TV version of something. A more focused take on things.
It's a challenge to do satire when the thing you're satirizing is almost beyond satire, but I think that's a challenge for everybody.
Many times, when you do what I do or work in journalism in general, people try to not explicitly present their opinions on topics.
In my career, I'm always trying to do something different.
When you use the word 'fair' in television, you're already in a fantasy world. Nothing is really fair in television.
In my time, I experienced a black man not being able to be the quarterback of a football team.
