Josh Radnor Quotes

I learned to choose my battles. Sometimes I let my producer deal with something that I didn't want to deal with.

I remember the first day I was looking at my hands and I thought about my nails. People wouldn't really be paying attention to that, but a Civil War doctor - What would they be doing with their nails? Would they cut them really low? And Dr. Burns said, "No, they would let them grow out so they can scoop stuff out. They would use their nails." So for a while I let my nails grow. They were too long. I kept stabbing myself by accident, so I cut them down, but I was trying to be faithful to the details.

I think a lot of Civil War stuff is written - As they say, history is written by the victors. And one of the things that I think is fascinating about this from a purely dramatic perspective is whether someone is right or wrong, you understand where they're coming from in this.

I think that the mark of a great book is that it will meet you wherever you're at and you'll feel and experience something new and different each time you read it.

Kindness is not about instant gratification. More often, it's akin to a low-risk investment that appreciates steadily over time.

I learned a lesson which I didn't heed: Don't put yourself in your movies. It's too much.

The attitude of the director is really important, in terms of setting tone.

Everyone has expectations. You just don't want to have them dashed, so you're quiet about them.

Acting on stage is still my favorite thing to do. And everyone who's been in musicals knows that there is nothing more fun.

Time off from the news is always something I welcome.

Talk about what you love and keep quiet about what you don't.

An obsessive attention to the news, I've realized, only serves to paint a picture of the world as a throbbing blob of dysfunction, most news falling somewhere on a scale from disappointing to calamitous.

In writing scripts now, having made a film, I'm much more conscious of what it means to shoot and edit a movie, and that affects the writing.

There's that great Bill Hicks line - the comedian - where he says, "Are you proud to be an American?" "I don't know. It's just where my parents had sex."

In college, you're kind of designing who you want to be. And I wanted to be a big reader.

One man's uplift is another man's sentimental hooey.

I haven't left the house without a packet of Kleenex in my back pocket for as long as I can remember. Whenever I start thinking I'm incredibly cool, the packet of Kleenex in my back pocket brings me right back down to earth.

But, yeah, I'm really happy when I'm writing. When I'm being creative and when I have something that I can put down. You know, if you go out and you overhear a conversation or you have a thought, you have a receptacle to go home and say, 'Oh, this would be great in this script.' Your antenna's out in a different way, and I love that time.

I have great people surrounding me and helping me out. I'm totally in love with directing movies and I hope to do more of it.

It really shocks me when I encounter people who think kindness doesn't matter. Because I think it's pretty much the only thing that matters.

There's something melancholy about professors because they're chronically abandoned. They form these lovely relationships with students and then the students leave and the professors stay the same. It's like they're chronically abandoned.

You can say something that can really help and actor and you can say something that can really get in the way of an actor's performance, kind of cut them off from their instincts and really get into their heads. And every actor's different. Every actor requires something different. Being an actor, for me, was the greatest training to be a writer and director.

There's something touching about a kid who's reading a book that's printed on actual paper. I think that anything that kids start reading, within reason, can lead to other discoveries.

I kicked college nostalgia in my late 20s. As much as I loved college and treasure the memories, I no longer want to go back.

As a person, I'm anti-violence.

I distinguish sentiment from sentimentality. Sentimentality makes your skin crawl. It's like too much sugar. But, sentiment is a great feeling.

What I write is very personal, but not autobiographical. It's more 'thematically personal' - what's up in my life in terms of themes at the moment.

All of the things I used to obsess over, I'm no longer as obsessed with. I have new concerns but they're a little more existential or cosmic.

There are just things you can explore in a movie that you can't in 22 minutes with a laugh track.

Here's the problem: I don't like who I've become when my iPhone is within reach. I find myself checking e-mails and responding to texts throughout the day with some kind of Pavlovian ferocity - it's not a conscious act, but a reflexive one.

I'll say this, and this has nothing to do with gender or sexuality: You do not want to get licked in the face repeatedly by another human being. You just don't. It's not pleasant.

My trick is the trick that everyone knows: Work really hard and prepare.

A lot of times, we're just sold these movies that are really cynically conceived and marketed, and they just want you there opening weekend, before everybody finds out it's not so good.