John Lithgow Quotes
-
We all have our secrets, and we all have our deceptions. Acting, at its best, is all about deceiving people, and this makes it all the more interesting to us.
-
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.
-
I gave up shame a long time ago.
-
When you end a successful sitcom, the most sensible thing to do is go back to the theater.
-
There's no more private family than the royal family. People who can really only be themselves with each other. The rest of us just spend all our time fascinated by them.
-
Churchill is so particular. He's as different from the rest of the population of Britain as he is from me.
-
I loved growing up in Ohio.
-
I am a storyteller, and the stories I tell are, when I'm lucky, really good ones. It's a very exciting thing to do with your life, and that's, I think, what keeps me hopeful.
-
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.
-
I went to Princeton High School when I was very serious about being an artist.
-
Academics tend to have wonderfully infantile senses of humor.
-
My hairline is receding. So my days as a romantic lead - even though I've never had them - are behind me.
-
The way I approach acting when there's a real life character, it's sort of like a Venn diagram. What I come up with is some amalgam of the two of us.
-
I consider myself a very lucky actor that, approaching 60, I'm still employed and employable.
-
I never get tired of hearing compliments.
-
There's nothing like spending an evening with an audience every night.
-
There is less difference than you would imagine entertaining little children and entertaining adults.
-
Voice work is fun. But about three-quarters of the things you enjoy about acting are just not there. You're not working with another actor; you're not working with an audience. You're just working with a bunch of writers and a microphone. It's very abstract.
-
Whenever I play a role, it's like I've been kidnapped inside my own body.
-
I was in 20 Shakespearean plays by the time I was 20.
-
Growing up in an atmosphere of storytelling made me an actor.
-
I'm a lazy actor, lazier than you would think. I don't usually do a lot of research.
-
Up there with my awards, I have a great big statue of Groucho Marx, just to put everything in perspective.
-
Britain is probably the most sophisticated combination of a monarchy and a democracy.