Top 70 Denis Leary Quotes

Usually when you watch a film, you’re just sort of biting your nails about things you could have done differently.

I want you to take away the hope because that’s the thing that’s killing me.

Racism isn’t born, folks, it’s taught. I have a two-year-old son. You know what he hates? Naps! End of list.

My goal is to leave this planet with the biggest carbon footprint I can possibly leave.

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.

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?

I’m really good at laundry, and I have no problem cleaning the kitchen.

No woman can be completely happy at any one moment in time. They’re always anticipating the next thing to argue or complain about.

I’d love to do another television series. I really love the writing process, and as an actor I really like how much you get to examine in television.

My father could swear in Gaelic and English, by the way, ladies and gentlemen.

No matter what anybody says, relationships are based on physical attraction. The first time I saw my wife, it was pure animal whatever.

I’m still pretty self-centered, greedy and angry.

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.

I think all priests should be married.

My brother and I tortured my mother growing up.

I think we’re going to carry the ‘Ice Age‘s up to ‘Ice Age 15,’ which means basically they’ll be in the present decade.

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.

If you had no enemies, you had no fun.

Wolfhounds helped kill off the wolves in Ireland.

I obviously identify with the anti-authority figure. I’ve pretty much always had problems with authority, ever since I was a kid. But, yeah, it’s not identifying, I think it’s more a part of my natural DNA that I question anybody who has a plan. Everybody‘s got to have an angle; that’s the way I grew up.

I don’t believe in the power of words.

My biggest regret in life is that I didn’t hit John Denver in the mouth while I has the chance.

Jon Stewart is exactly the same guy he’s always been, only with money. He knows that the moment he really believes he’s important, the funny goes away and he becomes Bill O’Reilly, except shorter and Jewish.

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.

I’ve always had a thing for Catwoman. Michelle Pfeiffer or Halle Berry in tight leather pants, with the boots – I’m pretty good with either one.

The best thing about series TV is that everyone you work with is hand-picked, as compared to working on a film.

I can’t text. My fingers are too big.

Good actors, especially when they know their character, will come in and either tell you in advance that they have an idea, or in the middle of the rehearsal or the scene they’ll let it loose and you go, ‘Ah that’s great.’

I bought my daughter a Chihuahua and I fell in love with it. So now I carry Coco around with me all the time.

Anybody who’s done standup will tell you that there’s nothing like it. The show starts at 8:00, the curtain goes up and there’s nobody else except you and the audience, and you just perform for them for two hours. Nobody yells, ‘Cut!’ There are no retakes. That is still the most exciting medium for me, and I love it.

You can’t teach somebody how to be funny. You’re either funny, or you ain’t.

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.

I will not bond. I will not share. I refuse to nurture.

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.’

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.

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.

I really like ‘Batman.’ Not the TV show, but the dark ‘Batman.’

I’m not really a Spider-Man fan. I’m more of a Batman guy.

We live in a country where John Lennon takes eight bullets, Yoko Ono is walking right beside him and not one hits her. Explain that to me!

I really, really like ‘Eastbound & Down.’ It’s one of the few things that makes me laugh. It’s almost too funny to get an award.

What firefighters and people in our military and cops do is separate from what the rest of us do; basically these people say, ‘I’m going to protect all these strangers.’

My dad was very much a John Wayne kind of guy, but he was also a great guy, great sense of humor, a real dedicated dad. I don’t think he ever missed a hockey game I was in.

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.

I didn’t raise my kids with the fear of God.

I went to see the ‘Spider-Man‘ movies because my wife is a fan, and so are my kids.

I’m a pretty boring guy. Compared to Ashton Kutcher, I live a really boring existence.

Once you have a firefighter in your family, your family and the families from his crew become one big extended family.

I studied acting in school and then, of course, couldn’t get an acting job.

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.

Having dealt with a lot of real firefighters, I know there are a lot of guys who, for lack of a better term, become addicted to the grief because it has kept them connected to these guys that they felt responsible for having lost.

Some people expect me to be funny all the time, and I’m not necessarily funny all the time.

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.’

Most people don’t know how underpaid and often ill-equipped urban fire departments are across North America.

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.

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.’

I believe in prescription drugs. I believe in feeling better.

The Social Wishlist on Facebook is a great example of everything right about social media.

I think we should take Iraq and Iran and combine them into one country and call it Irate. All the pissed off people live in one place and get it over with.

I wasn’t the best student. I wasn’t stupid, but I wasn’t paying a lot of attention.

The thing with movies is, because you have so little time, I always feel like there are more things we could’ve done with the character. If we’d done a sequel to ‘The Thomas Crown Affair,’ what would that have been like? But for the most part, you try not to think of that, because it’s just going to break your heart.

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.

Bill Murray doesn’t do anything. He barely shows up at the movies he says he’s going to do.

There we were in the middle of a sexual revolution wearing clothes that guaranteed we wouldn’t get laid.

There’s not going to be a ‘Rescue Me’ movie. Not a chance.

I basically – I don’t like tattoos, unless you’re a firefighter who has a tattoo that has to do with that or a military guy. That’s – those are people who should have tattoos.

I really, really like ‘Eastbound & Down.’ It’s one of the few things that makes me laugh.

Sometimes ‘great acting’ is just showing off – chewing up scenery and dialogue and other actors – the equivalent of a theatrical sugar rush.

I think it’s a shame when you come across young actors and musicians who haven‘t had the time to learn their craft. It doesn’t matter if it’s acting or music; you really have to learn how to do it from the bottom up because unless you have a great work ethic… fame is a terrible thing to have.

Everyone’s got skeletons in their closet, and I’ve got a million in mine, believe me. I tested the envelope; I pushed it. Whenever somebody in authority told me not to do something, I did it just to find out why they said not to do it.

I have a lot of conservative views on a lot of things.