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" 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. "

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" I do think - I always tell that to young people - go to college, do theater, work with an audience. Don't try to learn how to act in front of millions and millions of people. Don't make that your first ambition, to be on a sitcom or get into the movies. Learn who you are as an actor, and the best way to do that is to do it in front of an audience. "

John Lithgow

Ambition

Best

Work

" I really prize and love great painting. "

" I look on myself as a sort of hybrid, having grown up in the world of Shakespeare out in the cornfields of Ohio. "

John Lithgow

Look

Out

" We all grow up with inherited genes and inherited sensibilities, and they run very, very deep. "

John Lithgow

Grow

Grow Up

" Shakespeare is like mother's milk to me. "

" I never get tired of hearing compliments. "

" Oh, I'm dying to play Donald Trump someday, just because he's an unbelievable character. I'm a character actor; that's what you look for: outsized human beings. "

" When you end a successful sitcom, the most sensible thing to do is go back to the theater. "

" I won two Golden Globes, and there was a long, long period in between the wins. That might be explained by the fact that when I first won the award, for '3rd Rock on the Sun,' I satirically compared aliens on the show to the Foreign Press Association. And they did not take that well. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I went to - I got a wonderful college education. I went to Harvard. In those four years, I accumulated a lot of knowledge, but I also created a kind of habit of learning that has stayed with me my whole life. "

John Lithgow

Learning

Life

" Anytime a culture is in economic stress, ugly things start happening. "

" Money is just a low priority for me. I'm more interested in good work than a big bank account. "

John Lithgow

Good Work

Money

" I eat way too fast. "

" 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. "

" Time sneaks up on you like a windshield on a bug. "

John Lithgow

You

Time

" Everybody's a dreamer. "

" Churchill faced his own diminishing capabilities and increasing irrelevance by maintaining the sense that he was the only one who could solve whatever problem was before him. He was very often wrong, of course, but then he had spent so much of his life overcoming appalling mistakes, disasters, and rejections. "

" 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. "

John Lithgow

Good

I Am

" 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 keep looking for things I haven't done yet. "

" My hairline is receding. So my days as a romantic lead - even though I've never had them - are behind me. "

" I'm a fun father, but not a good father. The hard decisions always went to my wife. "

" Britain is probably the most sophisticated combination of a monarchy and a democracy. "

" I loved growing up in Ohio. "

John Lithgow

Loved

Growing

" Comedy is very, very hard to achieve. "

" Take care, be kind, be considerate of other people and other species, and be loving. "

" The Wodehouse language is so rich and detailed and hilarious. "

" Powerful people are always in charge. You have to acknowledge that and deal with it as a reality. They're not devils. They're not monsters. They're human beings, like us, that have their share of insecurities and fears. You have to contemplate that as you go through life. "