Don Rickles Quotes

Myself, after having not a child but this particular one, I couldn’t see how anyone could claim to love children in the generic any more that anyone could credibly claim to love people in a sufficiently sweeping sense as to embrace Pol Pot, Don Rickles, and an upstairs neighbor who does 2,000 jumping jacks at three in the morning.

Harry is a black man, and I’m a white man. We obviously come from different backgrounds, but we stand together on this stage as brothers. And as a brother, I must say these race riots are terrible. It’s awful how stores are being looted. The burning, the rioting, the stealing. But if, God forbid, it does happen again—and I pray it doesn’t—all I can say is, ‘Harry, I could use a couch and a couple of end tables.

Don Rickles, the Jewish comedian, in a late-night television appearance on July 19, 1999, told host David Letterman that were it not for Mexicans, his bed would never be made at his Las Vegas hotel. It was a nakedly racist remark.

I remember attending a Friars roast for Muhammad Ali when Don Rickles grabbed me and walked me up to Sinatra. “Hey, Frank,” he said to the Chairman of the Board, “tonight I’m sitting with this guy. You know why? Because he fills up baseball stadiums! You play bars.” Frank laughed and waved him off, with me standing there silently. Soon

Gallo and his party laughed along with everyone else at Don’s insults—sadly, there is no record of Don zinging Crazy Joe—and, after the show ended, they headed over to Umberto’s Clam House in Little Italy for Crazy Joe’s big birthday party. At around 4:30 a.m., as Gallo sat at his table, a middle-aged gunman calmly walked up and pumped two bullets into him before escaping in a getaway car. Crazy Joe, mortally wounded, staggered after him before collapsing in the street. The gangland slaying triggered a bloody mob war that lasted two years.

He’s bald, bellowing, and has a belly. He sort of looks like Don Rickles. I could deal with everything but the bald part. I start googling “Is hair hereditary? HAIReditary?” Maybe Baby Gap sells toupees?

Rickles, to his dying day, constantly reminded me that when his son was born, I went to a sports store and bought every piece of sporting equipment you could think of. I mean, literally everything,” recalled actor James Caan, who met Don through Don Adams and struck up a lifelong friendship with The Merchant of Venom. “The baseball crap, the hockey stuff . . . there were two big boxes and I handed them to him and I said, ‘This is to make sure the kid grows up straight.’ He never forgot it. Twenty years later he would still bring it up.

If I have learned anything, it is to keep my wife happy by sending her lavish gifts. Other men can learn from my success and send their wives and girlfriends fresh flowers for birthdays, anniversaries, and of course, Valentine's Day.