Quotes from David Harbour

I'm terrified of the unknown, which is a driving force for me. I like this idea that the things that terrify us also draw us in.

I'm normally a pretty loquacious, kind of fun person.

I did this movie, 'A Walk Among the Tombstones' - I truly play a horrible, horrible individual in that - and I would occasionally go to the theater and watch what people's responses were, and they would laugh. He makes jokes, and people would respond to him in a human way. Then I've really done my job if I've humanized a really horrible person.

I feel, in storytelling, people are so afraid that you won't get it unless you pound them over the head.

Those Duffer Brothers really know how to tell a story, and I think it makes you want to watch. 'Stranger Things' is remarkably watchable.

There is a lot of good television out there, stuff that is better for you than 'Stranger Things,' that, critically, people would be like, 'This is an important show,' but I would press you to find a show that's more watchable. That's hard to do.

I think that's what 'Stranger Things' does, it opens you up - it has a real beating heart to it.

My natural state is a state of an explorer - a performer, but someone who wants to explore their experience and reflect on their experience more than just lie on the beach. Even when I go on vacations, I get stressed out if I'm at the beach for, like, two days. I'm like, 'Can't we do something? I can't just sit there.'

A lot of the characters I gravitate towards feel like outsiders.

All the work I do is personal, so the good stuff and the bad stuff that you see in there is all good stuff and bad stuff that I have, and part of the journey, for me, has been to embrace these things that I find embarrassing about myself: my stubbornness, my ego, my maudlin-ness - these things that I see myself do, and I go, 'Oh, David, stop that!'

I'll put 'Stranger Things' up there with the best of it. I think it's such a profound show - it's very subtle in the way that it tells its story, but it's very effective. Every time I watch it, I feel something, which is very rare for me.

I don't associate success with happiness, and I don't take it to heart, like, 'Oh, I'm so special.'

If acting has any meaning, it is so that we can have greater empathy for other people.

Netflix sees people as users or subscribers or customers. Historically, networks have seen people as viewers.

Sometimes I feel like, those superheroes, if you threw a cookie at them, they would be more terrified than the villain because they might have to eat a carbohydrate.

One of the things about having played a lot of villains is... I don't have the same experience of someone who maybe has been a leading man since they were 22 and therefore looks at certain things in a character to romanticize themselves. I actually very much embrace the bad stuff.