John Lithgow Quotes
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I don't deal with the nuts and bolts of life.
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Anytime a culture is in economic stress, ugly things start happening.
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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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I gave up shame a long time ago.
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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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An artist is always thinking of something else. My father was like that. He had this feeling of abstraction, and I do, too.
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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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Growing up in an atmosphere of storytelling made me an actor.
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Academics tend to have wonderfully infantile senses of humor.
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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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My eagerness to please sometimes gets the better of me.
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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 probably a better granddad than dad because your role as a grandfather is to be fun, and I'm fun.
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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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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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Good acting is really excellent carpentry.
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It's not always easy to be proud of your government.
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Britain is probably the most sophisticated combination of a monarchy and a democracy.
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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 you end a successful sitcom, the most sensible thing to do is go back to the theater.
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Whenever I play a role, it's like I've been kidnapped inside my own body.
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I am in the business of exploring crazy possibilities.
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There's nothing like spending an evening with an audience every night.