John Lithgow Quotes
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There is less difference than you would imagine entertaining little children and entertaining adults.
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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 am in the business of exploring crazy possibilities.
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My hairline is receding. So my days as a romantic lead - even though I've never had them - are behind me.
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Anytime a culture is in economic stress, ugly things start happening.
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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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Academics tend to have wonderfully infantile senses of humor.
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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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I consider myself a very lucky actor that, approaching 60, I'm still employed and employable.
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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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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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Growing up in an atmosphere of storytelling made me an actor.
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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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Up there with my awards, I have a great big statue of Groucho Marx, just to put everything in perspective.
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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 went to Princeton High School when I was very serious about being an artist.
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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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Britain is probably the most sophisticated combination of a monarchy and a democracy.
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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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Whenever I play a role, it's like I've been kidnapped inside my own body.
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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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There's nothing like spending an evening with an audience every night.
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I'm a lazy actor, lazier than you would think. I don't usually do a lot of research.