Quotes from John Lithgow

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

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 am a storyteller, and the stories I tell are, when I'm lucky, really good ones. It's a very exciting thing to do with your life, and that's, I think, what keeps me hopeful.

I owe my whole career as a storyteller to my father. He was an actor/director/producer and teacher.

Growing up in an atmosphere of storytelling made me an actor.

I loved growing up in Ohio.

One of the things you learn as an actor is that human beings are capable of almost anything. I'm sort of in the business of illustrating that fact.

In TV and movies, you get known for a certain thing, and that's what's expected. Onstage, people are more open to whatever character you create from one play to the next.

I'm as vain as the next person, but I've made so much fun of myself over the years, and that's very salutary as you grow older.

I'm a very hopeful person. I mean, I'm an optimistic person, sometimes stupidly optimistic.

I work very hard on motivating everything I do as an actor. Explosive moments have to be completely motivated; whether they're explosive comedy or explosive horror, they have to come organically out of a scene and an interaction with another actor.

There's no more private family than the royal family. People who can really only be themselves with each other. The rest of us just spend all our time fascinated by them.

What fascinated me most was Churchill as a young child. He had a kind of Dickensian childhood. The neglect. And he was a terrible student. His whole life is a study in trying to overcome your feelings of inadequacy.

If I don't enjoy it, there's something seriously wrong. There's a reason why they call it playing, what we do. It's ecstatic fun, and I overdo it - I mean, I can't seem to stop - people ask me to act, and I say yes.

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.

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

An artist is always thinking of something else. My father was like that. He had this feeling of abstraction, and I do, too.

Will Ferrell is my new favorite person in the business. He's a completely adorable man.

I've said no to a lot of things I'd like to have done. My agent has never seen anything like it.

My very first role was when I was 2 1/2 years old; I was one of Nora's children in 'A Doll's House,' with my father playing Torvald.

Everybody's a dreamer.

No villain thinks of himself as a villain, and that's the approach I always take.

It's wonderful to play a villain who gets a laugh or to stop a comedy dead in its tracks with a touching moment. It's kind of like a symphony that has very different movements.