John Lithgow Quotes
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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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There is less difference than you would imagine entertaining little children and entertaining adults.
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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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Academics tend to have wonderfully infantile senses of humor.
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I consider myself a very lucky actor that, approaching 60, I'm still employed and employable.
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I don't deal with the nuts and bolts of life.
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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 went to Princeton High School when I was very serious about being an artist.
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Anytime a culture is in economic stress, ugly things start happening.
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Up there with my awards, I have a great big statue of Groucho Marx, just to put everything in perspective.
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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.
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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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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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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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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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Britain is probably the most sophisticated combination of a monarchy and a democracy.
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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.
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I am in the business of exploring crazy possibilities.
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Whenever I play a role, it's like I've been kidnapped inside my own body.
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Growing up in an atmosphere of storytelling made me an actor.
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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.
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My eagerness to please sometimes gets the better of me.
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Good acting is really excellent carpentry.