Denis Leary Quotes

I don't want to see a 'Sopranos' movie. This is just me. I like to think the end is where it was on TV as opposed to becoming a movie.

It became sort of a snowball effect, with guys trying to deal in their own way with 9/11, whether it was drinking or whatever.

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 praying for 'Ice Age' 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10. Because I really think we can run those characters into the '60s, and I'm talking the 1960s, you know? The Civil Rights Movement. That's what I'm praying for, because then I wouldn't have to do anything else.

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!

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 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.

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

Charlotte Rampling, when she was younger, looked exactly like my wife. That's one of the reasons that when I first saw my wife, my knees buckled. Based on her looks alone, she was already in my kitchen making eggs.

I'd love to play in a Red Sox game. It would be so awesome to actually walk out on the field and play, just for one inning. I'd also steal everything I could get my hands on in the clubhouse, which is why they won't let me do it.

Let me tell you something: I love the Yankees. And let me tell you why: because without the Yankees, there is nobody to hate.

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

For us as writers, it's really important to have songs we believe in - even before sometimes we shoot a scene. If we have a song that's so perfectly designed for a scene on 'Rescue Me,' we'll play it on loud speakers during the shooting. It helps the cameraman and it helps the director, and it helps the actors know what the feel is.

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.

You can have good writing, but a great actor will make it feel and sound like great writing. You can have great writing, and mediocre actors will make it feel mediocre. Without the actors, you have nothing.

I wanted to get more serialized. I had this idea for an event that would click onto everybody's mortality. I said, "I want somebody to die." Fortunately for me, when I was toying with that idea, John Landgraf, who's the head of FX but also a very smart executive, came up with the idea of the ashes in the maracas. He called me up and said, "Listen, what about this, they get the ashes in a box and when they get them, they shake them and they sound like maracas." And I was like, "Okay, now I've got my throughline."

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.

That's why I'm glad Jesus died when he did. Because if he lived to be 40, he would have ended up like Elvis. He was famous already at that point. If he lived to be 40, he'd be walking around Jerusalem with a big fat beer gut and black side burns going, Damn, I'm the son of God. Give me a cheeseburger and french fries right now.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

I love Santa Monica and Venice because I like the beach. I have a lot of friends in that area.

I think all priests should be married.

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.

I obviously identify with the anti-authority figure. I've pretty much always had problems with authority, ever since I was a kid.

The things that make me angry still make me angry. George Carlin is 67, and he's still as funny as he's ever been, and he's still angry. And that makes me feel good, because I feel like if I stick around long enough, I'll still be able to work.

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?

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.

The second season is generally easier do because you know the actors better and they know the characters better and if everybody likes each other you can really go all types of places.

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.

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

I'm no day at the beach. And if it is a beach, it's Hampton Beach. Ever been there? It's not nice.

I spent a long time working in the movies to figure out that kind of acting and also how to write and produce for the screen.

Sin is in, and so we begin.

It's human nature for people to expect people to be what they see on the screen.

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

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.

I certainly know guys in comedy, I know some actors, and I definitely know some musicians, who have survived to a certain age and make a good living doing what they do, but nobody knows who they are. They wake up every day and they have the ability to get paid practicing their art, but underneath it all, if you scratched the surface, you still get, "If I only had my own show . . .," or "If I only had my own band . . ." It's what people always do when they want to be their own star.

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.

"Yeah, well, if you eat red meat, it stays in your colon for fifteen years!" Good! I paid for it; I want it in my ass, okay? I want them to find a meat sweater from my esophagus to my asshole when they open me up in the end! "This guy's covered in meat! He's Meat-Man! He's Meat-Tracheotomy-Man!"

I'm no prophet and I'm no genius, but I can only tell you what I seem to know. As a fan of television and the movies, I think it's all for the better.

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.

Everyone should have an evil secret plan.

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.

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

I'm the Lord of the Dance! F-k Michael Flatley, it's me!