Small Mind Quotes

“Small mind competes, big mind collaborates and great mind encompasses.”
― Amit Ray, Walking the Path of Compassion

“I buy what I think is a beautiful gift for Richard Pryor. It’s a pre-Civil War cigarette and match holder, with a small black child sitting on top of two yellow haystacks smoking a corncob pipe. Right before dinner, I give it to Richard. He takes one look at it and screams, “I fucking hate it!”
Shocked, I ask, “Hate it? How can you hate it?”
“It’s fucking racist.”
"It’s fucking black art; it may have been racist but it’s not now.
This is an artistic documentation of those times." Now I’m on a roll. “Open your eyes.”
“I’ll open your eyes, bitch.””
― Jennifer Lee, Tarnished Angel: Surviving in the Dark Curve of Drugs, Violence, Sex, and Fame : A Memoir

“I think of the added pressures that black men have when making love because they feel that they are expected to perform in some legendary way—Mandingo sex. What was that expression? Once go black, you can't go back.”
― Jennifer Lee, Tarnished Angel: Surviving in the Dark Curve of Drugs, Violence, Sex, and Fame : A Memoir

“I represent everything that distances Richard Pryor from Peoria, Illinois' ghettos.”
― Jennifer Lee, Tarnished Angel: Surviving in the Dark Curve of Drugs, Violence, Sex, and Fame : A Memoir

“I see us as a black and white version of John and Yoko, a duet of magic and productivity. It feels as though it will last forever. Richard Pryor has finally found his panacea, me.
People look at me as Richard's deliverance: he is the tragic, self- destructive freak no longer.”
― Jennifer Lee, Tarnished Angel: Surviving in the Dark Curve of Drugs, Violence, Sex, and Fame : A Memoir

“As I listen to their jive, I try to find my way around the street mind, the black man's mind. Feeling left out, like an ostracized kid at a playground, I try to join in on the "get down" flavor of the dialogue by calling Richard Pryor a nigger.”
― Jennifer Lee, Tarnished Angel: Surviving in the Dark Curve of Drugs, Violence, Sex, and Fame : A Memoir

“Both Richard and I sat silent and watched Jennifer Lee. She came across the room and over to us and swept our chess pieces off the board.
“Bastard!” she announced and started back for the door.
“No. Jennifer, I’ve had it with you. You took your clothes off in front of my son. My son came to me and he was crying and I said what’s wrong but he wouldn’t say anything. I made him tell me, Jennifer. He said you came out of your bedroom naked. You showed my son your pussy, woman!”
“And you hit me,” Jennifer accused him. I realized that they were both showing off right in front of me to embarrass the other one.
“And you spit in my face and called me a nigger!” he shot back.
She came back. “Because I wanted to! Damn you!”
“Well, just leave. I told you to leave. Now leave. I’ve done all I could for you, just leave. You would never treat Warren Beatty like you treated me. Or any of those other white boys you star-fucked.”
He turned to me.
“Man, can you imagine her doing that to Warren Beatty?”
I said, “No!”
― Cecil Brown

“I take what Jennifer Lee reported (in her 1991 memoir) with a grain of salt.”
― Cecil Brown, Pryor Lives!: How Richard Pryor Became Richard Pryor Or Kiss My Rich, Happy Black...Ass! A Memoir