Quotes from David Ogden Stiers

I had a meeting in LA in which they took a really overstuffed hour and a half. It was as close to old Hollywood as I remembered it in the last 20 years.

When something really extreme happens, you have to find a way to embrace that and include it in how you think about the character. Sometimes it's not easy.

I love pulling people into concert halls who might not otherwise go and getting their ears tuned.

It's rare to be treated like a friend you haven't met in a Hollywood meeting.

The ebulliently sharp mind of 'White Christmas' director Walter Bobbie made me tremble and strive in the same breath. The deceptively 'simple' dialogue of David Ives, asking every actor to just. say. it. Float it on the breeze; it doesn't need 'explanation,' just energy and truth.

I've played Lear three times, I would love to do it again.

We lament the speed of our society and the lack of depth and the nature of disposable information.

Fun can happen on the interior. Nobody knows about it, but there are fireworks going on inside your spirit when you hear a great orchestra playing great music.

I am certainly not a mainstream religious man.

The simple act of sitting down and playing something enormously complex and spiritually uplifting on a harpsichord just bores kids to tears. There's no sizzle, there's no grab. But it's the great lesson of serious music, that it invites you to listen, rather than demands that you listen.

You hear the same work by different orchestras, different conductors, violinists, pianists, singers, and slowly, the work reveals itself and begins to live deeper in you.

Cogsworth, the character I did on 'Beauty and the Beast,' could be a bit flamboyant onscreen, because basically, he is a cartoon. But they didn't want Cogsworth to become Disney's gay character, because it got around a gay man was playing him.

Writing is hard work. Generating stories that catch people's attention and holding it are very difficult.

I will never master this craft. Orchestras are very, very forthcoming with me.

Because I don't take money, I'll go anywhere and do a benefit concert with almost any orchestra.

A lot affects the outcome. It boils down to scheduling and the commitment of the network.

I'd forgotten I'd done the anime called Spirited Away, the English version of a Japanese film.

I am not a long-run actor. I admire actors who can do that.

Very often when I go in to meet for movies or pilots, I'm put on videotape. I hate the notion that that tape is going to sit on a shelf and never get better.

It's really important to stay engaged and involved in the character.

If it's right and true, it's listened to and accommodated.

Something happens to us all when we experience something as a unit that doesn't occur when we're on our couches or holding our little portable DVD players.