Radnor Quotes

#1. I went to school at Radnor High School. And I went to a liberal arts college in St. Louis, Missouri, called Lindenwood College.

Lee Daniels

#2. Josh Radnor is that rare thing: a writer-director who thinks like an actor but still knows how to create a comedy with shape and vision. Liberal Arts is the best movie about college I've seen since I don't know what ... Dryly affectionate and super-sharp. Elizabeth Olsen is every inch a star.

Owen Gleiberman

#3. So many people: Lucille Ball is the earliest incarnation of a woman I thought was funny, Joan Rivers, Roseanne, Carol Burnett, Gilda Radnor, down to current times, where you have Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, and Kristen Wiig.

Chelsea Peretti

#4. No matter how dark things may get in a story, I feel it's the responsibility of the storyteller to leave the audience with at least a shred of hope.

Josh Radnor

#5. One of the secrets to life is saying yes to change and allowing things to transition, but I also think you have to mark the time and give thanks for all that it gave you.

Josh Radnor

#6. In college, you're kind of designing who you want to be. And I wanted to be a big reader.

Josh Radnor

#7. It's not our job to play judge and jury, to determine who is worthy of our kindness and who is not. We just need to be kind, unconditionally and without ulterior motive, even - or rather, especially - when we'd prefer not to be.

Josh Radnor

#8. Sometimes I watch the broad comedies coming out of Hollywood and I think, 'You know, sex is a big part of people's lives, but is that really the only thing men are ever concerned about?' People are more complicated than they appear in film or television.

Josh Radnor

#9. I like movies that are about real people in real time with real problems.

Josh Radnor

#10. There's so much nonsense tossed around about L.A. and how horrible it is and 'don't go out there' and all that stuff. So I went out to L.A. and I was pleasantly surprised.

Josh Radnor

#11. One thing I'm most proud of, in my movies, is that I think the performances are super-strong, but that's not all me. I think part of it is casting appropriately.

Josh Radnor

#12. What I write is very personal, but not autobiographical. It's more 'thematically personal' - what's up in my life in terms of themes at the moment.

Josh Radnor

#13. Kindness is not about instant gratification. More often, it's akin to a low-risk investment that appreciates steadily over time.

Josh Radnor

#14. It never made sense to me that someone would achieve any kind of success in show business, only to become a jerk.

Josh Radnor

#15. After a brief period in which I had let many a Southern Californian convince me that it was all 'in my mind,' I am once again officially allergic to dogs.

Josh Radnor

#16. I'm a little less hungry as an actor than I used to be. When you're a director, you're the conductor of the orchestra, and when you're an actor, you're playing the violin. There's a thrill to each of them, but as the conductor, you get the fuller sound.

Josh Radnor

#17. We don't have a lot of space in our imaginations to allow people to expand what they do.

Josh Radnor

#18. It's really hard to be poor in New York - I was really poor when I lived in New York.

Josh Radnor

#19. I know not everyone starts out reading high literature. If you read enough you might be drawn to some other things, so maybe those vampire books are what they call 'gateway books.' I just coined that term. I don't know if there's a thing called 'gateway books.'

Josh Radnor

#20. I distinguish sentiment from sentimentality. Sentimentality makes your skin crawl. It's like too much sugar. But, sentiment is a great feeling.

Josh Radnor

#21. Talk about what you love and keep quiet about what you don't.

Josh Radnor

#22. One man's uplift is another man's sentimental hooey.

Josh Radnor

#23. I feel comfortable with women. I have two sisters, so I grew up in a female-dominated environment.

Josh Radnor

#24. Time off from the news is always something I welcome.

Josh Radnor

#25. Film allows me to ask some really big questions with the time to explore them deeply. I love the form.

Josh Radnor

#26. I don't love large groups of men. I've always felt like something terrible could happen when there were no women. If there are women around, it feels like there's less of a chance that anyone will get stabbed.

Josh Radnor

#27. Everyone has expectations. You just don't want to have them dashed, so you're quiet about them.

Josh Radnor

#28. There's something melancholy about professors because they're chronically abandoned. They form these lovely relationships with students and then the students leave and the professors stay the same. It's like they're chronically abandoned.

Josh Radnor

#29. When I go to movies and I love the movie, it's because it feels like it articulated something about how we're living now, and also gives me some insight into my own life. I feel actually altered after having seen it.

Josh Radnor

#30. I find myself going out less and less. When you're 22 and see older people start to do that, it's depressing, but once you hit 30, you think, 'Wow, I've been working all week - it might be really nice to stay in!'

Josh Radnor

#31. A lot of times, we're just sold these movies that are really cynically conceived and marketed, and they just want you there opening weekend, before everybody finds out it's not so good.

Josh Radnor

#32. And so, however many people watch this thing, that's how many different opinions there will be about it. But I don't feel like it has an agenda in terms of its ideology. It just presents a story like a mirror. It's a mirror more than it is than a distorted mirror.

Josh Radnor

#33. I actually have a thing about proper nouns. They clang on my ear in a weird way when I hear them dropped into movies.

Josh Radnor

#34. I'll say this, and this has nothing to do with gender or sexuality: You do not want to get licked in the face repeatedly by another human being. You just don't. It's not pleasant.

Josh Radnor

#35. I care about reading, a lot. It's a big part of my life.

Josh Radnor

#36. There's something touching about a kid who's reading a book that's printed on actual paper. I think that anything that kids start reading, within reason, can lead to other discoveries.

Josh Radnor

#37. And as a filmmaker, I'm trying to unhook myself from this idea that unless you have a brilliant, long, enormously lucrative theatrical run, that your movie somehow failed. And I don't believe that.

Josh Radnor

#38. I have really good female friends. I've never bought the whole men-and-women-can't-be-friends thing. I think that's sort of nonsense.

Josh Radnor

#39. A movie can and should have some real dissonance throughout - rage, heartache, tears, conflict, catharsis and all the other elements Aristotle demanded of a good story - but the chord has to be resolved.

Josh Radnor

#40. We're like a gardener with a hose and our attention is water - we can water flowers or we can water weeds.

Josh Radnor

#41. I think that the mark of a great book is that it will meet you wherever you're at and you'll feel and experience something new and different each time you read it.

Josh Radnor

#42. The reflexive allergy to L.A. that a lot of New Yorkers have, I feel like it's kind of nonsense.

Josh Radnor

#43. Well, I stopped drinking. That was actually a big deal. I didn't go through any harrowing rock-bottom experience. I just made a decision to stop drinking.

Josh Radnor

#44. An obsessive attention to the news, I've realized, only serves to paint a picture of the world as a throbbing blob of dysfunction, most news falling somewhere on a scale from disappointing to calamitous.

Josh Radnor

#45. I kicked college nostalgia in my late 20s. As much as I loved college and treasure the memories, I no longer want to go back.

Josh Radnor

#46. My whole thing is that I want to explore why you read books, what's the purpose of reading, and maybe that it's not that cool to hate something just because it's popular.

Josh Radnor

#47. I really like to travel when I write. Something about seeing new things and being in new cultures and environments provokes new thoughts in your head.

Josh Radnor

#48. Knowing when to say something and when not to say something is important.

Josh Radnor

#49. I've always been attracted to ensembles. When I started doing plays in high school and in college, I always loved the community aspect of it. I loved these little families that would develop.

Josh Radnor

#50. You know, I'm not saying, 'Oh, because I play a good guy on TV, I need to suddenly be villainous in a movie.' I look at it more like: does this role has a kind of urgency for me in terms of, 'Can I not say no to it for whatever reason?'

Josh Radnor

#51. I think a lot of Civil War stuff is written - As they say, history is written by the victors. And one of the things that I think is fascinating about this from a purely dramatic perspective is whether someone is right or wrong, you understand where they're coming from in this.

Josh Radnor

#52. I don't think evil people or negative people are inherently interesting all the time. People who are good people getting better at being themselves - to me, that's something that's really interesting to watch.

Josh Radnor

#53. When I'm working, it's great. When I'm not working, it's great.

Josh Radnor

#54. The purpose of fiction is to combat loneliness.

Josh Radnor

#55. It's strange to look back over a full season. Our characters have accrued all these memories, but so have we, the actors. And sometimes the character memories and the actor memories bleed into each other.

Josh Radnor

#56. Even though I occasionally appear on it, I don't watch television.

Josh Radnor

#57. The attitude of the director is really important, in terms of setting tone.

Josh Radnor

#58. While baseball and parties can help, the only thing that heals a broken heart is time.

Josh Radnor

#59. My trick is the trick that everyone knows: Work really hard and prepare.

Josh Radnor

#60. Here's the problem: I don't like who I've become when my iPhone is within reach. I find myself checking e-mails and responding to texts throughout the day with some kind of Pavlovian ferocity - it's not a conscious act, but a reflexive one.

Josh Radnor

#61. My film school is making movies. But, I do think that being an actor has served me immensely, as both a writer and director, in terms of knowing what is playable and what will be fun to play, for actors, and also how to communicate to actors on set, and not screw them up and get them in their head.

Josh Radnor

#62. I'm not a masochistic reader. If something is just too dense or not enjoyable, even though I'm told it should be good for me, I'll put it down. That said, most of what I read would be considered high-end or good for you, I suppose. But, I also think that reading should be enjoyable.

Josh Radnor

#63. I haven't left the house without a packet of Kleenex in my back pocket for as long as I can remember. Whenever I start thinking I'm incredibly cool, the packet of Kleenex in my back pocket brings me right back down to earth.

Josh Radnor

#64. It really shocks me when I encounter people who think kindness doesn't matter. Because I think it's pretty much the only thing that matters.

Josh Radnor

#65. To write a story about New York that only deals with people in your age and socioeconomic bracket, that feels dishonest to me. So much of New York comes from everyone bumping into each other.

Josh Radnor

#66. As a person, I'm anti-violence.

Josh Radnor

#67. If I'm feeling something, I have a lot of different ways to express it, you know? I can write an article about it. I can write a screenplay about it. I can act in someone's thing.

Josh Radnor

#68. I tend to read things that are a little more on the nourishing side. But if I don't enjoy something, I'll put it down.

Josh Radnor

#69. All of the things I used to obsess over, I'm no longer as obsessed with. I have new concerns but they're a little more existential or cosmic.

Josh Radnor

#70. I think the word 'earnest' kind of has a negative connotation on some level. I think one of the things that's happened is that being cynical is somehow conflated with being sophisticated. I think that's problematic, to say the least.

Josh Radnor

#71. I learned a lesson which I didn't heed: Don't put yourself in your movies. It's too much.

Josh Radnor

#72. When I write a film, there's a particular thing I am wrestling with and the question or concern I'm dealing with has to be big enough for me to dedicate a year or two of my life. If the question isn't big enough, or rich enough, I'll lose interest.

Josh Radnor

#73. Acting on stage is still my favorite thing to do. And everyone who's been in musicals knows that there is nothing more fun.

Josh Radnor

#74. There are just things you can explore in a movie that you can't in 22 minutes with a laugh track.

Josh Radnor

#75. There's that great Bill Hicks line - the comedian - where he says, "Are you proud to be an American?" "I don't know. It's just where my parents had sex."

Josh Radnor

#76. I sometimes don't know what I'm writing when I start writing it, on some level.

Josh Radnor

#77. In writing scripts now, having made a film, I'm much more conscious of what it means to shoot and edit a movie, and that affects the writing.

Josh Radnor

#78. I'm not sitting around saying, 'Man, I'd really love to direct a western.' That's just not something I'm probably going to do, mostly because I'm allergic to horses.

Josh Radnor

#79. I learned to choose my battles. Sometimes I let my producer deal with something that I didn't want to deal with.

Josh Radnor

#80. We are so vocal about what we hate.

Josh Radnor

#81. I went through this very serious Woody Allen phase in college and a little bit after college. I still see his movies.

Josh Radnor