Top 60 David Harbour Quotes

I think people feel like other people are very different from them… And that people who are different from them are actually sort of unworthy of the same rights or empathy. I don’t understand that.

At the end of the day, my biggest fear in life is that I’m gonna wind up being an actor who plays the dad on a TV show like ‘Full House’ or ‘Small Wonder’ or something – I’m, like, the desexualized dad in the show ‘Alf.’

In a sense, human beings are human beings. Their feelings of aloneness, of brokenness, their feelings of hurt and disappointment, are universal. It’s the ways they choose to act on their feelings that separates them.

I think I’m very hard on myself. I think I’ve always been very hard on myself since I was a kid.

I’m normally a pretty loquacious, kind of fun person.

I do feel like anything benefits from character logic. That can be from the dumbest ad to the greatest Shakespearean drama to the silliest ‘Saturday Night Live’ sketch. There is a certain specificity in detail, which you can get when you’re paying attention to stuff like that.

With ‘Deadpool’ and ‘Logan,’ they are trying to do different things.

Untangling Christmas lights is the true tragedy of ‘Stranger Things.’

One of the things about having played a lot of villains is… I don’t have the same experience of someone who maybe has been a leading man since they were 22 and therefore looks at certain things in a character to romanticize themselves. I actually very much embrace the bad stuff.

I am a dude who is meant to be on a couch in New York City thumbing through magazines.

What makes someone sexy in my mind is who they are. It’s not necessarily how they look.

With a lot of projects, you never know if it’s going to be executed properly. And also, you never know if people are going to respond to it.

The mythos of superheroes is our mythos today. They are American myths. ‘Captain America,’ ‘Iron Man,’ ‘Hulk’ – these are the biggest movies in the world. But sometimes, superhero movies can be a little bit thin.

One of the things I’ve been interested in my whole career is exploring masculinity and what it means to be a man. The sensitivity of a man, but also the violence and power that goes along with it.

I’m terrified of the unknown, which is a driving force for me. I like this idea that the things that terrify us also draw us in.

When you push and pull heavy things, your body thinks it’s going to die, and so it’s like, ‘I better get bigger, in case we do that tomorrow.’

One of my impulses in acting has always to make people feel less alone.

A lot of the characters I gravitate towards feel like outsiders.

The more I work in the film business, the more I see that those guys, the directors, have the most fun on set.

I actually went back and watched all of ‘True Detective”s Season One again, which I think is a true masterpiece.

I tend to find that movies have become so slick that I have trouble identifying with the characters.

I got the ‘Stranger Things’ script, like, a week before NBC canceled ‘State of Affairs.’ I really had this moment where I’m like, ‘I’m done.’ My neuroses is very sophisticated: I was like, ‘I am done. Hollywood is done with David Harbour. They are finished.’

My natural state is a state of an explorer – a performer, but someone who wants to explore their experience and reflect on their experience more than just lie on the beach. Even when I go on vacations, I get stressed out if I’m at the beach for, like, two days. I’m like, ‘Can’t we do something? I can’t just sit there.’

You gotta do things your own way. You have to find your own path. You have to take what appeals to you and leave all the rest.

I would like to see sexiness sort of embodied in people’s real bodies, as opposed to those bodies that are just full of narcissism.

Netflix sees people as users or subscribers or customers. Historically, networks have seen people as viewers.

Those Duffer Brothers really know how to tell a story, and I think it makes you want to watch. ‘Stranger Things’ is remarkably watchable.

I’m a bit of a strange human being – I love to work. I love art. I love self-expression.

That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do is to feel like what you’re doing moves someone, and that ultimately, maybe they can make a different choice in their life that may be better, right?

When I got to be, like, in high school and stuff, I sort of was drawn to that feeling of feeling uncomfortable in my skin and being confused by human beings, like, just constantly confused.

There is a lot of good television out there, stuff that is better for you than ‘Stranger Things,’ that, critically, people would be like, ‘This is an important show,’ but I would press you to find a show that’s more watchable. That’s hard to do.

Social media should be more like a cocktail party than anything else. You can have your fun jokes, and you can also express yourself and your beliefs. It’s a conversation, not a sledgehammer.

I want to bring love handles and eating sandwiches back.

I love all kinds of stuff. I really am so eclectic in my taste. I love film noir, I love thrillers, and I love big blockbuster popcorn cinema stuff, but I like it when it’s twinged with a bit more social consciousness.

Always, with speeches, I feel like it’s an opportunity to say something.

People who are deep thinkers, who have sort of a weird way of looking at the universe, are wildly attractive to me.

There are certain societal laws that are just accepted, things that are arbitrary. I think the fun thing about psychotics is that they question that. It can be very freeing… like, my ego or my individuality trumps society’s law.

Some people get very successful for something they’re very cynical about – like Alec Guinness in ‘Star Wars.’ He thought it was ridiculous. Whereas for me, I’m so proud of ‘Stranger Things.’ I’m so proud of everyone’s work in it. And it’s become so successful. So for those two to meet is incredible.

I feel like the most human among us are the weirdest among us. Those voices can be the most creative and the most special. You look around at your parents, your friends, your aunts and uncles, and you realize nobody is normal.

I feel like Shakespeare is so epic, in a way that sci-fi genre stuff is epic, it transcends the mundane, and it takes you to this place of real passion and real beauty.

One of the most beautiful things about Shakespeare’s Hamlet is when he stops in the middle of the play to ask, ‘To be or not to be?’ Then, right at the end, he decides to ‘let be.’ The first season of ‘Stranger Things’ was Hopper asking whether ‘to be or not to be’ and the second is to ‘let be.’

I’m around 6’4′ and 240 pounds. So I rarely feel that intimidated by other men. But I’ve got to give it up to Terry Bradshaw. That guy is a complete bulldog.

Sometimes I feel like, those superheroes, if you threw a cookie at them, they would be more terrified than the villain because they might have to eat a carbohydrate.

In this business, certainly it’s a lot crazier for women than it is for men, but there’s such a thing where there’s a lot of judgment on the way you look and on your body.

When I was in 8th grade, I saw Branagh’s ‘Henry V’ in the Paris Theater, and it changed my life.

I’ll put ‘Stranger Things’ up there with the best of it. I think it’s such a profound show – it’s very subtle in the way that it tells its story, but it’s very effective. Every time I watch it, I feel something, which is very rare for me.

As much as I can, I like to curate the information the people know personally about me.

If you are misunderstood, I want you to know that I feel the same way.

I grew up doing regional Shakespeare, and when Hamlet sees the ghost of his father, there’s something about that that you don’t really do in film anymore.

The fact is, for years, I had been trapped in a certain narcissism and a desire to have a certain body and look sexy.

If I was in high school, and we had Twitter, and Harrison Ford was on Twitter, I totally would have tweeted him and asked for him to take my high school photos with me.

I loved ‘True Detective’ so much in Season 1, and then when the Season 2 monstrosity came around, I was like, ‘What is this show? What have you done to this show?’

I’ve always been passionate about the stories I want to tell.

I can like Michael Keaton’s Batman, and I can like Christian Bale’s Batman.

I don’t want to do procedural: I want to do longform.

The interesting thing about my career is for years I was trying to do that thing of getting in shape and looking cool – I would look at myself in camera angles and think how my chin looked the best and all this stuff. And I really couldn’t get that much work.

I did a movie with Jamie Foxx that was kind of action, and, you know, Jim Hopper’s a little bit action; he does throw a good punch.

It was always my dream to be a New York theater actor. I never thought I was pretty enough to be on camera.

All of Aaron Sorkin’s characters are so smart.

I love to watch human beings figuring out their limitations.