Top 100 Denis Leary Quotes
#1. I always hated the Grateful Dead. Never even bought a Led Zeppelin album.
Denis Leary
#2. Yeah, I love living in New York, man, and people who live in New York, we wear that fact like a badge right on our sleeve because we know that fact impresses everybody! I was in Vietnam. So what? I live in New York!
Denis Leary
#3. Stand-up comedy and comedy in general is the ultimate form of free speech, because you get to poke holes in all the pretentious bubbles politicians and pundits and popes and pretenders try to float over our heads.
Denis Leary
#4. If you're over 52 years old and you're on Facebook, do us all a favor and log off now.
Denis Leary
#5. You just can't win. Men have very recent land mines in their heads. Women have recorded conversations and photographs in their heads from 15 years ago.
Denis Leary
#6. In addition to my cousin, there were 30 or 40 guys I grew up with who became firefighters as well. So, I've been around firefighters all my life.
Denis Leary
#7. We've always talked about doing something else and Campbell Scott is always busy and I'm always busy. But when we came up with the idea of doing the potato famine as a hip hop musical, I wanted somebody who was going to bring gravity.
Denis Leary
#9. My charity is in the business of helping firefighters in any way that we can. For instance, after 9/11 we were the second-fastest charity to raise and distribute money to the widows and surviving family members of the 343 firefighters who died that day.
Denis Leary
#10. If you want a long-term relationship that doesn't require a lot of work, I say, get a dog. They love you no matter what. But when it comes to humans, there's no secret; you really have to appreciate the person every single day.
Denis Leary
#11. My kids watch everything downloaded; they have no idea what the numbers or the names of the channels mean, except, 'FX makes the show that I see on my computer.' So it's harder to get a show on the air, but at the same time, there are a lot of terrific shows.
Denis Leary
#12. Personally, I think Jim Henson said it best when he said "Anybody got an aspirin? I think I've got a cold."
Denis Leary
#13. You know why the French hate us so much? Thay gave us the croissant. And you know what we did with it? We turned it into our croissandwich, thank you very much.
Denis Leary
#14. I'm gonna get one of those tracheotomies, so I can smoke two cigarettes at the same time! I'm gonna get nine tracheotomies, all around my neck, I'll be Tracheotomy Man! He can smoke a pack
at a time, he's Tracheotomy Man!
Denis Leary
#15. One thing that's great about firefighters: If they don't have the equipment they desperately need, they don't have the help, they don't care. They'll do it on their own.
Denis Leary
#16. We didn't have rehab back in the Seventies. Back in the Seventies, rehab meant you stopped doing coke, but you kept smoking pot and drinking for a couple more weeks.
Denis Leary
#17. Coffee doesn't need a menu, it needs a cup. That's all it needs! Maybe a saucer underneath the cup - that's it.
Denis Leary
#18. Rosemary Rodriguez directed on Rescue Me for us, and I love her. She's fantastic with actresses and she's got a great sense of humor. That was a huge thing for me.
Denis Leary
#19. Why hate someone for the color of their skin when there are much better reasons to hate them.
Denis Leary
#20. If you do good work, it tends to stick around. People still come up to me and say, 'The Ref' is my favorite Christmas movie.'
Denis Leary
#21. When I become president, all you assholes that ride bikes in the city? Lock and load! You're going down!
Denis Leary
#22. You try to - you want to fly on both sides of the political fence because that's where the - where the comedy is.
Denis Leary
#23. Loud, stupid and overeating will suffice as long as we also have the funny, the fierce and the intellectual
Denis Leary
#24. When I go to Batman movies, I always think, 'Man, I would like to be a bad guy in a Batman movie.' especially as they got darker when they go to the Christian Bale era.
Denis Leary
#25. Sometimes I park in handicap spaces while handicapped people make handicapped faces.
Denis Leary
#26. My brother and I tortured my mother growing up.
Denis Leary
#27. I'm not saying being a comedian is brain surgery, but it is definitely - it's like being a carpenter. You learn how to make tables and chairs. You have to have the right tools, and you have to know how to put the thing together, right?
Denis Leary
#28. You can't teach somebody how to be funny. You're either funny, or you ain't.
Denis Leary
#29. If I'm president, there are going to be government vans that drive around and pick up people who shouldn't be wearing certain clothing. Talk about lack of civil rights - I'm sorry, I'm pulling you right off the street, and we're giving you clothes that you're going to be O.K. in.
Denis Leary
#30. When I was a teenager, you couldn't get straight pants. Then in '76, when punk started to hit, it was a revelation that you could find straight pants again.
Denis Leary
#31. All men hear is blah, blah, blah, blah, SEX, blah, blah, blah, FOOD, blah, blah, blah, BEER.
Denis Leary
#32. Every job has parts of it that are a giant pain in the ass - whether you carry a penis or a purse.
Denis Leary
#33. People are disappointed that you aren't exactly who they thought you were, as opposed to somebody who's just walking around trying to get some laundry done.
Denis Leary
#34. Here's the problem with Easter. The Catholic Church needs to pick a date because it keeps moving. And I think the reason they always have Easter moving to different dates is to catch us.
Denis Leary
#35. It says on the back of the Nyquil box, 'May cause drowsiness.' It should say, 'Don't make any plans, OK? Kiss your family and friends good-bye.'
Denis Leary
#36. I think all priests should be married.
Denis Leary
#37. I love to smoke. I smoke seven thousand packs a day!
Denis Leary
#38. My career plan at this point is 'Ice Age 5' through '10,' and even '12,' and 'Spider Man' - you know, basically I'd be Emma Stone's dad for the rest of my career. I really don't have any problem doing that.
Denis Leary
#39. I'm still pretty self-centered, greedy and angry.
Denis Leary
#40. No matter what anybody says, relationships are based on physical attraction. The first time I saw my wife, it was pure animal whatever.
Denis Leary
#41. I think daycare is great for people who have to work two jobs. My problem is with people who are dropping kids off at daycare because they want to go out and spend the day golfing or getting their nails done. You know what I mean? That's not why they invented daycare.
Denis Leary
#42. I wasn't the best student. I wasn't stupid, but I wasn't paying a lot of attention.
Denis Leary
#43. Jerry Lewis has been married twenty times. He gets married on a Tuesday, they find his wife dead in a swimming pool on Thursday. Maybe if you married someone who's old enough to swim next time, Ok Jerry?
Denis Leary
#44. Ann Romney talking about middle class moms is like Chris Christie talking about a salad
Denis Leary
#45. When I clicked into this idea of doing a band and examining a band as a dysfunctional family, I wanted to reverse that Rescue Me formula.
Denis Leary
#46. With any actor, if you know your character well enough, you'll know pretty much what he would say under any circumstance, or whatever situation might rear its head.
Denis Leary
#47. I'm really happy I went to a Catholic school because a lot of the repressive tactics they use make for great senses of humor.
Denis Leary
#48. I'm in my truck talking to Jesus. And you can see a World Series ring on my right pinkie finger. But when I take my sunglasses off a second later, it's gone. It's the whole divine intervention thing. You know Jesus had something to do with them winning.
Denis Leary
#49. I don't want a president like me! I suck, okay. I want an elitist, smart guy.
Denis Leary
#50. There's no way around it - drama is very difficult to shoot. It's very heavy and something that you carry with you for the course of the day.
Denis Leary
#51. The filter's the best part. That's where they put the heroin.
Denis Leary
#52. Don't buy the toys that make the noise!
Denis Leary
#53. Is it possible to get a cup of coffee-flavored coffee anymore in this country? What happened with coffee? Did I miss a meeting? They have every other flavor but coffee-flavored coffee. They have mochaccino, frappaccino, cappuccino, al pacino ... Coffee doesn't need a menu, it needs a cup.
Denis Leary
#54. At some level, you've got to have the ability to - especially in film and in front of the camera, you got to have the ability to drop into character and close off the entire crew and the camera and everything else.
Denis Leary
#55. My father left Ireland because he did not want to muck horse manure for the rest of his life, and he wanted to come to New York.
Denis Leary
#56. Peter Falk and Denis Leary today walked into a Starbucks and shot 27 people, without any announcement whatsoever.
Denis Leary
#57. The Social Wishlist on Facebook is a great example of everything right about social media.
Denis Leary
#58. I remember 9/11; we had 'Comics Come Home' about a month after those events. That night, even the comedians were concerned. Would the audience be ready to laugh? It was a release for everyone.
Denis Leary
#59. My wife and I were poor when I started but we struggled along until things happened for me in my thirties. I knew I was doing what I loved even if I wasn't getting paid for it, so I think I'd still be doing it.
Denis Leary
#60. When I was doing standup, I always wanted to get out of the standup world and take it back into the theatrical world, like with 'No Cure For Cancer.'
Denis Leary
#61. First of all, I have to have trucks because I live most of my time on a horse farm, so I've gotta have trucks. It's in the northeast; I've got to have pickup trucks to move snow, number one. Number two, just if I'm driving, I don't have to have an SUV, but I want a big car.
Denis Leary
#62. When I first got famous, Greg Dulli was also just starting to cook with the Afghan Whigs, and because of the MTV awards I met Dave Grohl and Nirvana and all these rock and roll bands. So I had experience with what it was like when people were taking off at that time.
Denis Leary
#63. I guess you get pigeon-holed in Hollywood, but I'm ok with that because I've been able to do a lot. I started in the theater, then I went to stand-up comedy, and then when I went into the movies to do comedy and drama and big movies and small movies.
Denis Leary
#64. Let me tell you something: I love the Yankees. And let me tell you why: because without the Yankees, there is nobody to hate.
Denis Leary
#65. How many whales do we really need? I figure five. One for each ocean.
Denis Leary
#66. Most of the women placed in the fire department here in New York never passed the physical test. And a fat guy or a short guy, or anybody not passing the test in a life-or-death job, leads to friction.
Denis Leary
#67. One of those things that I like about TV is that if you get a group of people you like, you can work with these people for months at a time, and you can discover their strengths and weaknesses, and you can use those in the direction where you take the characters.
Denis Leary
#68. Not eating meat is a decision, eating meat is an instinct.
Denis Leary
#70. I write what I think is funny and I write from a sense of popping a balloon or a sense of injustice, whether it's about yourself, or whether it's about something else. It's my worldview; it doesn't mean that everybody has to agree with it.
Denis Leary
#71. There's a method aspect to Campbell Scott character and he really wants to get into his character and he wants to cast to go on a fast so that by the time the play opens nobody's eaten in three days because he wants the audience to feel the pain from the stage.
Denis Leary
#72. Campbell [Scott] also directed me in a film with Hope Davis called Final. That was the first thing we did together, but I've known him for years.
Denis Leary
#73. I'm a lapsed Catholic in the best sense of the word.
Denis Leary
#74. Kids are incredibly expensive. But it pays off later when they are better educated, bigger, and better-looking than you. And find you incessantly boring and uncool.
Denis Leary
#75. I wanted to be a hockey player. Where I grew up, the basketball courts were rarely used. I was terrible in school and actually said, 'I'm going to be a hockey player.'
Denis Leary
#76. The biggest battle for a lot of people who come out of the theater, which is where I was trained, is that they can never forget that a camera is pointed at them.
Denis Leary
#77. Heavy Metal fans are buying Heavy Metal records, taking the records home, listening to the records and then blowing their heads off with shotguns? Where's the problem? That's an unemployment solution right there, folks! It's called natural selection.
Denis Leary
#78. Firefighters are some of the most selfless public servants you will ever encounter.
Denis Leary
#79. There are about a thousand different variations on a horse neigh. Some of them sound like a horse having sex, some of them like a horse having sad sex.
Denis Leary
#80. Every actor thinks he can do comedy, and it's not true.
Denis Leary
#81. I fell asleep during 'Year One' twice. And my son, who never falls asleep during a Jack Black movie, also nodded off. That's how bad it was. I was incredibly disappointed.
Denis Leary
#82. I'm sick and tired of our generation being called the TV generation. What do you expect? We watched Lee Harvey Oswald get his brains blown out all over. How could we change the channel after that?
Denis Leary
#83. People saying, 'Life didn't turn out the way I wanted it to.' Welcome to the club. I wanted to be the starting center-fielder for the Boston Red Sox, for chrissakes!
Denis Leary
#84. I love French stuff. Mmmm, french fries.
Denis Leary
#85. Dustin Hoffman said this one time, that if he hadn't made it as a film star, he would still be happy as a character actor because he was a character actor because of his face from day one, so he would always work in the theater.
Denis Leary
#86. Some people expect me to be funny all the time, and I'm not necessarily funny all the time.
Denis Leary
#87. I do have to say that I think that President Obama is the greatest President in the history of all of our Presidents, and that he can do no wrong in my book. So how's that for prejudice on the Democratic side?
Denis Leary
#88. I tried eating vegetarian. I felt like a wimp going into a restaurant. "What do you want to eat sir? Broccoli?" Broccoli's a side dish, folks. Always was, always will be, OK! When they ask me what I want, I say: What do you think I want? This is America. I want a bowl of raw red meat right now.
Denis Leary
#89. I take music pretty seriously. You see that scar on my wrist? You see that? You know where that's from? I heard the Bee Gees were getting back together again. I couldn't take it, OK!
Denis Leary
#90. I really like 'Batman.' Not the TV show, but the dark 'Batman.'
Denis Leary
#91. Worrying about tomorrow is the best way to screw up today.
Denis Leary
#92. This is the most exciting place in the world to live. Oh yeah! There are so many ways to die in New York City! Race riots, drive by shootings, subway crashes, construction cranes collapsing on the sidewalks, manhole covers blowing up and asbestos shooting into the sky.
Denis Leary
#93. What I've learned is that life is too short and movies are too long.
Denis Leary
#94. I did 12 years with nuns, you know. So I came out of it going, like, 'I think Jesus is all right.' The rest of it I think stinks to the high heavens.
Denis Leary
#95. Everything you look at now, the scripts that come in that you look at, the television scripts are way better than the movie script. The talent is going to television.
Denis Leary
#96. The first movie I saw where it convinced me I could be an actor was 'Mean Streets,' so whenever I see Robert De Niro and he says, 'Hi, Denis,' it's still a really big deal.
Denis Leary
#97. My primary reason for bringing my son on was to have a voice on the show [Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll] that would bring a 25 or 26 year old point of view to it, and my son is very capable of writing that stuff.
Denis Leary
#98. I needed someone really intense, but also somebody with a lot of theatrical credibility.
Denis Leary
#99. I'm the Lord of the Dance! F-k Michael Flatley, it's me!
Denis Leary
#100. It's important to have your own space. I've never trusted people who do everything together. I call them "Kool-Aid Couples," because it's like they drank the same Kool-Aid and it's drugged them into constantly gazing into each other's eyes.
Denis Leary
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