197 Quotes by John Lithgow

I look around, and 50 percent of the big-budget entertainment you are seeing these days is dystopian. This is the era of 'Hunger Games' and blasted landscapes and 'The Walking Dead.'

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.

The theater is my power center, and I love doing it in New York.

When I was 13 years old, I went to visit my aunt and uncle in Washington, D.C., and they just deposited me at the National Gallery. I would go from Rembrandt to Picasso - I remember that experience so vividly.

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

I am such a coward when it comes to political arguments. I tend to sort of recoil rather than engage.

Good acting is really excellent carpentry.

I'm too much of a Libra. I too often see the other person's point of view and capitulate, even though I have strong political convictions. It's just my liability. Maybe I'm too empathetic. That's the actor in me.

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