John Lithgow Quotes

I certainly had my years as an out of work actor but I was married with a baby. My wife was supporting us.

We should have charity for what the dead say. We may disapprove of what they say, but we should not insult them and revile them knowing they cannot not defend themselves.

It's nice when you've done enough movies that you can do your own anthology.

I'm a fun father, but not a good father. The hard decisions always went to my wife

My father was a man of the theater. I grew up in a theater family. As a young man, as a boy, I gypsied around with my siblings and my parents to, like, eight different towns, went to eight different schools. All those things were extremely formative, and I think that's what happens.

I find I have to walk a little faster in public these days, but it's very easy to remember when nobody had any idea who I was.

I'm always being asked to play roles or characters that I don't really resemble.

Up there with my awards, I have a great big statue of Groucho Marx, just to put everything in perspective.

Books make great gifts because they're something you love that you can share.

I'm very concerned for the future of the earth and its amazing creatures. We've got to be careful and make sure we don't foul our own nest

It's a very tough time for the playwright. Broadway has become almost a musical comedy theme park with all these long-running shows.

What you aspire to on a sitcom is the feeling of live comedy.

If we are ever going to save this society and the world, there has got to be a way for us to work together. That may be more than we can ever hope to achieve, just because of human nature.

If my life was a play, age 35 was my intermission.

There's nothing like spending an evening with an audience every night.

I can't imagine doing an hour-long dramatic series because it's so much work. A sitcom is a wonderful gig. You work from 10 to 4 every day, it's fun, and you get to live at home.

Having grown up in the theater family, having done a huge amount of acting from a very little boy to precocious teenager in Shakespeare festivals that my father produced, I went off to college and fell in with the theater gang. I was already an experienced actor. I became a kind of campus star. I heard all this applause and laughter.

It's my theory that if you hear enough applause and laughter at a young enough age, you're doomed

Time sneaks up on you like a windshield on a bug.

I was in 20 Shakespearean plays by the time I was 20.

I Need a Good Book I need a good story. I need a good book. The kind that explodes Off the shelf. I need some good writing, Alive and exciting, To contemplate all by myself. I need a good novel, I need a good read. I probably need Two or three. I need a good tale Of love and betrayal Or perhaps an adventure at sea. I need a good saga. I need a good yarn. A momentous and mightily Or slight one. But with thousands and thousands And thousands of books, I need someone to tell me The right one. -John Lithgow

Everybody's a dreamer.

You kill three people, they call you a murderer. You kill a million people, they call you a conqueror. Go figure.

I can't get used to the fact that I'm 68 years old. I still feel like a youngster. I am playing a part even older than 68 - 71 years old. It's kind of startling to see myself in a movie and realize, "Yup. That's exactly what I look like."

I'm a con artist in that I'm an actor. I make people believe something is real when they know perfectly well it isn't.

I'd sleep under a Vermeer.

I got a wonderful college education. I went to Harvard. In those four years I accumulated a lot of knowledge but I also created a kind of habit of learning that has stayed with me my whole life.

I always tell that to young people - go to college, do theater, work with an audience. Don't try to learn how to act in front of millions and millions of people. Don't make that your first ambition, to be on a sitcom or get into the movies. Learn who you are as an actor, and the best way to do that is to do it in front of an audience.

I think there are all sorts of ways of turning into an actor, and there are a vast variety of different actors. You know, you interview plenty of actors and you know they come at it from a different direction and acting means different things to a lot of people.

Instead of being a theater actor who sometimes does movies I became a movie actor who sometimes does theater.

That's how you deal with stardom; you make it the least important part of your life.

I don't hesitate to do nudity as an actor if it's done well.

I learned the most about myself, and you ask what I learned? Well, I learned my strengths and my weaknesses, and it's far more important to learn about your weaknesses than your strengths.

I went to Princeton High School, when I was very serious about being an artist. I was in a theatre family but I didn't want to become an actor.

I grew up in a theater family. My father was a regional theater classical repertory producer. He created Shakespeare festivals. He produced all of Shakespeare's plays, mostly in Shakespeare festivals in Ohio. One of them, the Great Lakes Theater Festival in Cleveland, is still going. So I grew up not wanting to be an actor, not wanting to go into the family business.

I went to Harvard and immediately fell into the theater gang, and I was already an experienced actor, so you go with the flow! I've already used the phrase "campus star."

If you read in front of your kids, it's very likely that they'll become readers, too

Growing up I didn't want to be an actor. I sort of didn't want to go into the family business; the main reason being there was something I wanted to do far more, which was be an artist.

One of the things that gives me a lot of pleasure about both the solo show and the book is that it tells people about my dad. He really was an important man. He was a kind of pioneer of regional theater. He was the first American producer to ever produce all of Shakespeare plays.

I consider myself a very lucky actor that, approaching 60, I'm still employed and employable.

Any character you play, you're on his side. You do have the third eye that looks at what an appalling creature he is, but you have to look at what's good about him.

The problem is that people are pulling farther apart, rather than make an effort to get back together. There have been remarkable moments that united this country. It makes everyone feel relieved. Then because of economic stress, political shifts, we get wrenched apart again. I think it's cyclical. I am an optimist by nature. There are moments, the period after 9/11, the way we responded. The election of Barack Obama. There are moments where the country felt good about being American. I'm waiting for that to happen again.

I look for every opportunity to mix comedy and horror and tragedy. I love catching audiences off-guard.

I keep looking for things I haven't done yet.

You have to overcome enormous self-consciousness, but nudity is about the strongest thing you can do in an acting performance. It's the most unsettling or the most comic or the most sexual.

I was married very young. I lived a very middle class life. I was married at age 21, divorced at 31. I didn't sleep on people's couches.

I subscribe to the great George G. Scott quote, "All actors are in trouble. Directors who don't help are a pain in the ass". We all need help from directors. We are all equally insecure.

When you end a successful sitcom, the most sensible thing to do is go back to the theater.