John Lithgow Quotes
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I got to have a great big knock-down, drag-out fight with Sylvester Stallone. Every actor should have that much fun at some point. You can hit him as hard as you can, and it's never enough for him.
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I don't deal with the nuts and bolts of life.
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Will Ferrell is my new favorite person in the business. He's a completely adorable man.
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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.
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I gave up shame a long time ago.
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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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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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Churchill faced his own diminishing capabilities and increasing irrelevance by maintaining the sense that he was the only one who could solve whatever problem was before him. He was very often wrong, of course, but then he had spent so much of his life overcoming appalling mistakes, disasters, and rejections.
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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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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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Growing up in an atmosphere of storytelling made me an actor.
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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 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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Academics tend to have wonderfully infantile senses of humor.
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I'm probably a better granddad than dad because your role as a grandfather is to be fun, and I'm fun.
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It's not always easy to be proud of your government.
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Good acting is really excellent carpentry.
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When you end a successful sitcom, the most sensible thing to do is go back to the theater.
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Britain is probably the most sophisticated combination of a monarchy and a democracy.
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There's nothing like spending an evening with an audience every night.
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If you read in front of your kids, it's very likely that they'll become readers, too.
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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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Whenever I play a role, it's like I've been kidnapped inside my own body.
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In TV and movies, you get known for a certain thing, and that's what's expected. Onstage, people are more open to whatever character you create from one play to the next.