Quotes from John Lithgow

If you hear enough applause and laughter at a young enough age, you are doomed to become an actor.

Time sneaks up on you like a wind shield on a bug.

mine is the only photograph of an American actor to grace the walls of the Actors' Bar at The Dirty Duck.

A year of weekly paychecks had created a severe dependency in me, and I desperately needed to break it.

My great hero was that archetype of cheerful American normalcy, Norman Rockwell.

He told me that, in fact, he had always imagined me as a producer-director, beholden to nobody and immune to the constant rejection that all actors must endure. If you must go into the theater, he advised, be the person in charge and acquire the skills to do it right.

had traveled to London to study acting, pricked on by the sense that classical English acting was the high-water mark in English-speaking theater. I would soon learn a surprising truth: I came from America, home to an acting tradition that my new English friends envied, to an even greater degree than I envied theirs.

I always knew I'd be preaching to the choir. Slap the title 'Dumpty' on a book of political humor, and your bias is glaringly obvious. From the beginning, I've intended these verses for people who oppose our current President, hoping to briefly yank them out of their chronic depression at his persistent grip on executive power.

It slowly dawned on me that, for most of the audience, the show's main attraction was neither the play nor the production but Liv.

Burton began that evening gracious, charming, and sober. Liv and I watched in fascination and horror, exchanging eye-rolling glances, as too much drink gradually turned that splendid man into a boorish, self-loathing sot.

blithering idiot, gone round the bend:

Despite the opposition of several prominent Republican officials,

POTUS whose pants are routinely on fire Could be Dumpty the Huckster or Dumpty the Liar. With his bullshit throughout our pandemic attack, An apt nom de guerre would be Dumpty the Quack.

Dumpty the Bigot.

My snobbery made me do it.

he's Dumpty the

I went to Harvard because I got in. This is not the best reason to pick a college,

When in the world will this lunacy end?

When good things come along, you end up saying yes to them. Because they're rare.

In 1995, I proposed the Harvard Arts Medal. The idea was to celebrate the fact that, although it's rare, Harvard men and women do go into the creative arts. Over the years we've had major, major figures, like Jack Lemmon, John Updike, Yo-Yo Ma, and Bonnie Raitt.

It's pretty rare that I see a film that I did a long, long time ago.

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

Every time I see somebody behaving truly insanely in real life, I think, 'Yes! I'm not over the top after all!'

The first long chapter of my career was almost entirely theater so that, by the time I was 30, 35, I sort of knew who I was as an actor, and I was gradually learning who I was as a human being.