Orlando Jones Quotes

Orlando Jones provides witty reflections on communication and generational challenges that keep you thinking.

18 quotes

1. When you're trying to find that line between are you doing comedy, are you doing drama, what are you doing, Martin, for me, anchors it very often, because he approaches it from such just a pure acting standpoint.

2. I'm from that part of the country. I was born in Mobile. Ala. and grew up in South Carolina. I have family in Miss. Having gone through a number of hurricanes myself, none obviously as devastating as this one, one of the things you forget about is that at least as a parent, you're able to understand what has transpired in your life. But for a one- or two-year-old, it's a completely different level of devastation because everything that they know and have ever known is gone.

3. Comedy just seemed like the way in.

4. Quite honestly, I didn't think the deal was going to make, because I wanted part of the creative control. I was impressed that they were making an offer to a non-athlete young black male to be a spokesperson for two and a half years. To their credit, they said, absolutely yes, they never questioned anything I wanted to do.

5. You give the guy an Image Award three years in a row and then turn on him like that? If that's the role they want to fulfill, they need to send a clearer message.

6. Most of my friends between 21 and 31 are at different stages of figuring out what the hell they are going to do with their lives. It's a big part of our generation. What is the next step?

7. I became acutely aware of how important it is to separate the difference between who you are and who the character you're playing is.

8. Belly was not a bad movie. It was visually very interesting.

9. In New York, people are pretty cool, and you don't catch a lot of grief. But in certain spots, man, it's over. If I stand in the same place for more than 20 minutes or 10 minutes or something, there'll be 40 people standing there, all screaming something different.

10. I'm challenging myself to reverse the hate.

11. There was a guy that was friends with my father, a very well-known and powerful hustler on the Eastern seaboard. He was a very interesting guy who would literally rent a passenger van and would take the poor kids from the ghettos and black neighborhoods down to the sporting goods store and just spend money. Buy them whatever they want.

12. My father marched in Selma. My father was there in Alabama. That's where I was born. My birth certificate says 'colored.' It does not say I'm African-American or black. So for me, those are real realities that are not subject to opinion.

13. The only reason I wanted to do 'MADtv' was because I grew up reading 'Mad Magazine' because I'm a comic-book nerd.

14. People choose whatever projects they've seen that I've done over the years, and whichever one is their favorite is the only one they care about. But I realized that none of those were my voice or representative of what my thoughts and feelings were.

15. I've been in fandom for a really long time. Back in the day, you had to go to a con to engage in fandom, and that was really the only way.

16. I think it's impossible to be a young black male from the South, born to an era I was born in, and not have a clear sense of what race really means in the country.

17. I'm tired of cookie-cutter monolithic representation of black folks.

18. Ultimately, the core premise of 'American Gods' is, 'What do you believe?' And how your beliefs can be manifested into reality.