John Lithgow Quotations

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.

Look at the darkest hit musicals - Cabaret, West Side Story, Carousel - they are exuberant experiences. They send you out of the theater filled with music

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

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

If it's well written and well directed and you've got good actors to work with, acting is easy. But making sure all the ducks are in a row is the hard part. It's very rare

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

Take care, be kind, be considerate of other people and other species, and be loving.

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

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

I gave up shame a long time ago.

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

Academics tend to have wonderfully infantile senses of humor.

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

I have a lot of faith in people.

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

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

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

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 keep looking for things I haven't done yet.

In animation, there's this exhilarating moment of discovery when you see the film and you say, Oh THAT'S what I was doing.

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

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

I was supposed to be a physics genius on 'Third Rock From the Sun,' and I'm supposed to be very knowledgeable about physics narrating this piece, ... In both cases, I'm a very good actor.

You are so lucky because you live on the west coast of Florida, where there are lots and lots of manatees, ... Most of the kids in the country don't know about manatees and how wonderful they are.

I really prize and love great painting. It's so out of date now. It's slightly come back in.

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

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

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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

It's very interesting, I had an extremely intense experience with my dad in 2002, when he was an old man and very ill and I was taking care of him and my mother, and he was extremely depressed, virtually lost the will to live, and I realized my main job was cheering him up to save his life.

I'd sleep under a Vermeer.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

My only regret is that we didn't have more kids. I came from a family of four kids, but my wife and I just started too late.

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.

The Broadway audience is made up of a greater percentage of tourists now. There's not nearly as much variety and danger and challenge in what's being offered.

Shakespeare is like mother's milk to me.

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 never get tired of hearing compliments.

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

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.

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

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

The most exciting acting tends to happen in roles you never thought you could play.