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

For me, working on stage is much more exhausting than all the other mediums, but it's also much more thrilling.

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

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

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 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.