John Lithgow Quotes
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My worst audition was for Tim Burton for 'Batman.'
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I'm a fun father, but not a good father. The hard decisions always went to my wife.
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I like to rehearse and rehearse and have everything exactly calculated before we start shooting - probably to a fault.
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Look at the darkest hit musicals - Cabaret, West Side Story, Carousel - they are exuberant experiences. They send you out of the theater filled with music.
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Every time I see somebody behaving truly insanely in real life, I think, 'Yes! I'm not over the top after all!'
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I'm an avid Boston Red Sox fan.
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What fascinated me most was Churchill as a young child. He had a kind of Dickensian childhood. The neglect. And he was a terrible student. His whole life is a study in trying to overcome your feelings of inadequacy.
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The essence of comedy, drama, and horror is surprise. I have an uncanny ability to surprise people because they look at my face, and they don't know where I'm going.
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The zombie is the new, sort of, archetype of our times.
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Next to the word 'luvvie' in the dictionary, there's a picture of me. At least in the American editions.
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It's not always easy to be proud of your government.
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'M. Butterfly' is usually the answer to the question, 'What has been your favorite experience?' The reason being, it is an astonishing play.
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When I was a teenager, I remember the extraordinary feeling of accomplishment for completing 'Vanity Fair.' I don't think it was even for school.
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In 1995, I proposed the Harvard Arts Medal. The idea was to celebrate the fact that, although it's rare, Harvard men and women do go into the creative arts. Over the years we've had major, major figures, like Jack Lemmon, John Updike, Yo-Yo Ma, and Bonnie Raitt.
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In animation, there's this exhilarating moment of discovery when you see the film and you say, Oh THAT'S what I was doing.
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I owe my whole career as a storyteller to my father. He was an actor/director/producer and teacher.
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If you go through your life being completely truthful, everybody will hate you, and something I deeply fear is being hated.
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I don't deal with the nuts and bolts of life.
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To my mum, I owe security in a very insecure young life. We lived in about 10 different places because of my father's chequered career, and she always made me feel a sense of consistency and security. I was a well-mothered boy.
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I won two Golden Globes, and there was a long, long period in between the wins. That might be explained by the fact that when I first won the award, for '3rd Rock on the Sun,' I satirically compared aliens on the show to the Foreign Press Association. And they did not take that well.
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I do all the cooking in the family. I cook Italian, mostly, pastas and roasts, and bit by bit, I'm learning how to bake. I think cooking is a gift to other people.
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I've said no to a lot of things I'd like to have done. My agent has never seen anything like it.
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It's very important to stay creative and not simply to wait around for people to want you. It's the hardest thing about the business.
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I grew up with this crazy upbringing of living many places and always being the new kid in town, not like a service brat where you're always going to school with other new kids in town. I was constantly arriving in small towns and going to school with kids who'd been together since they were in kindergarten.