Quotes from Amanda Seales

I look to icons like George Carlin, Chris Rock, and Richard Pryor on how to present these concepts of social change and subversiveness to an audience in a way that's palatable.

Wokeness, for what it's worth, is a buzzword that a lot of people are not truly understanding the depth of. I think sometimes things work their way into the zeitgeist, and they lose their weight. And wokeness is one of those words that has reached that point.

When I came into stand-up, I found a certain safe space of intellectualism, of camaraderie, of excellence that really has always been natural to me but always felt foreign in the other spaces I've been in.

The truth is what facts are. I like facts. I like things to line up and be clear, and when we are honest and true about things, it helps things to make sense, and it cuts out a lot of the fat that gets in the way and causes for the misunderstandings that I believe lead to violence and... dysfunction, etc.

I was in the music industry as Amanda Diva for 10 years but I realized that I had bigger work to do and needed to get busy doing that work. I really do believe that I'm here for a bigger purpose, and I want to be a role model and speak for the black community and black women specifically. Humor was the way it felt most organic and effective for me.

In hip hop, 'real' has always meant one who represents in actuality what they present in imagery. For instance, once upon a time, if a rapper spoke about being gangsta, they needed to truly be that, or they were 'frontin.'

I've made it my business to condition and train folks to understand that you'll never know what's going to come out of my mouth.

When people agree with you, they'll just like it and keep it moving, but when people don't agree with you, that's when they come for your whole neck.

My mother is black, from Grenada, so my blackness was always there, but It wasn't until I started hanging with the upperclassmen black actors at my high school that I really got my roots in being a black American, which is a distinctly different identity and experience.

I'm constantly fighting the angry black woman stigma, the 'You're pretty, you can't be funny' stigma.

I have planted my flag in my comedy being useful for social change.

In music, you ain't really got to be able to sing. In comedy, you may be cute, you may be able to add a little extra to your routine, but if you're not funny, no one's really rocking with you - and if you're a black woman, you better be hilarious. As usual, we always have to do the most.

Auditioning for people you know is way more stressful than auditioning for people you don't know. And you have to pretend that you don't know because they're just staring at you.

I just love being able to create and make things that inspire and that make people laugh, and my motivation to keep going is to make more opportunities to do that.

Comedy has allowed me to be my 100-percent-true self, as opposed to other places, where I feel like that's been a hindrance. Whether it's music or poetry or hosting, people want you to be something else: they want you to be packaged in a certain way.

My goal is to just have options.

If I couldn't get to where I wanted to by being my organic self - which is a smart, funny, unapologetically black woman - then I felt like it's not worth doing it if I can't do it the most organic way possible. Which is why I left the music business.

Growing up, dating seemed pretty straightforward: If someone was interested in getting to know you on a romantic level, they approached, exchanged info, and proceeded to communicate with you in a consistent fashion between outings of various natures.

Cornrows came back with a vengeance in the early '00s with every dude trying to grow his hair out to get 'braided up.' It was crazy. Girls were getting carpal tunnel in hoods across America trying to make plaits out of 1.5 inches of ungreased hair.

I've been grinding a really long time, and I've been broke for a lot of years. I may not have looked like it because, if you're fly, you don't need a dollar - you just need charisma. But I was riding hope as currency for a very long time. I feel like now, more than ever, I'm in my purpose, and comedy is the foundation of that.

My brain doesn't work in a typical linear fashion: my brain is vibrant and fast and bright and on 10,000 all the time.

I want to see my career evolve into limitlessness.