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 LearyYou 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 LearyMy nieces and my nephews think the only thing that I do is 'Ice Age.' That's fine with me because pretty soon they'll grow up enough to realize that I suck or that my time has passed, whichever it might be.
Denis LearyI bought my daughter a Chihuahua and I fell in love with it. So now I carry Coco around with me all the time.
Denis LearyPeople 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 LearyThis 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 LearyI'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 LearyIf you see me doing a new stand-up special, it probably means I've been out of work for a while.
Denis LearyI've only done two other TV shows [instead of Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll], one was Rescue Me and the other was a show called The Job, which was at ABC and only on for two seasons.
Denis LearyIn my experience in series TV if you have a good crew and a great cast it's going to be a great group - similar to the theater where it's a bunch of people who are really talented and go to work each day and challenge each other and if you are lucky enough to get a hit then it's five or six or seven years of this kind of work.
Denis LearyThere 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 LearyVacuuming is great. I do the laundry. I love washing machines. I'm the maid in my house.
Denis LearyCoffee doesn't need a menu, it needs a cup. That's all it needs! Maybe a saucer underneath the cup — that's it.
Denis LearySometimes 'great acting' is just showing off - chewing up scenery and dialogue and other actors - the equivalent of a theatrical sugar rush.
Denis LearyMost movies suck, even the independent ones. Hollywood is like baseball: Hit three good ones out of 10 and you're a Hall of Famer.
Denis LearyLoud, stupid and overeating will suffice as long as we also have the funny, the fierce and the intellectual
Denis LearyDustin 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 LearyAnybody 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.
Denis LearyI 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 LearyThe 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 LearyMost people think, "Life sucks, and then you die." I disagree. I think life sucks. Then you get cancer. Then you go into chemotherapy. You lose all your hair, you feel bad about yourself. Then all of the sudden the cancer goes into remission, and then all of the sudden you have a stroke. You can't move your right side. And then, maybe, you die.
Denis LearyThe best thing about series TV is that everyone you work with is hand-picked, as compared to working on a film.
Denis LearyMost 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 LearyWhat 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."
Denis LearyI'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 LearyStand-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 LearyOn a movie, you have a great time, and you're really enjoying the work, and then everybody is done and goes their separate ways, and you maybe never get to work with those people again.
Denis LearyAnthony Mackie in 'The Hurt Locker' is everything an actor can hope to be. So rock steady in his portrayal that you immediately forget every performance he may have previously given, and focus only on the character in front of you.
Denis LearyMy biggest regret in life is that I didn't hit John Denver in the mouth while I has the chance.
Denis Leary