Best 54 quotes of John Lithgow on MyQuotes

Academics tend to have wonderfully infantile senses of humor.

Anyone who hears enough laughter and applause at a young age will become an actor, whether they intend to or not.

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

Everybody's a dreamer.

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

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.

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 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 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.

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

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

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

I'd sleep under a Vermeer.

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

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

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.

I gave up shame a long time ago.

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

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

I'm as flighty as anybody. You put a lot out there. I've been through the process a lot. When I play a major role, it's my instinct to create a nice atmosphere. People in the major roles dominate the tone of an entire film. To my mind, it's much easier to work creatively when everyone's friendly.

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

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 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

I never get tired of hearing compliments.

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

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 It's so out of date now.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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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 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 was very interested in being a painter. I had facility, I had talent, and I loved painting and printmaking, and I was quite serious about it.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Shakespeare is like mother's milk to me.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.