Top 100 Neil Patrick Harris Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “I think it has been a weird mistake to have people with their own music careers going on and judging people because when they’re too critical, it affects them. They don’t want to be that honest, because they need to keep their appearance up.”

— Neil Patrick Harris

52. “I don’t like to be disparaging about my past roles. That’s the only taboo that I don’t like to cross.”

— Neil Patrick Harris

53. “My favorite time to dance is at, like, wedding receptions, when it’s all ages and everyone seems to be having fun.”

— Neil Patrick Harris

54. “So pluck up your courage and take that risk! Add another story to the book of your life. Even if it doesn’t go the way you planned or wanted, you’ll still learn from it. Adventure.”

— Neil Patrick Harris

55. “I’ve done plenty of daredeviling – from white-water rafting to bungee jumping. But I think the most fearless was hosting the Emmy Awards. It was overwhelming, and I definitely had to leave fear at the door.”

— Neil Patrick Harris

56. “Babies just change everything. You have to become super selfless and super tired and super amenable to change. They just change all the time.”

— Neil Patrick Harris

57. “Tobey’s a mellow, cool guy. He’s just a good guy. I know that’s not the answer you want, and I don’t mean that as the political thing to say, but he’s a nice guy.”

— Neil Patrick Harris

58. “I like the tube more than the NY subway though, you’ve got cushioned seats.”

— Neil Patrick Harris

59. “You have to be careful when you’re doing an interview.”

— Neil Patrick Harris

60. “It’s like, the more you commit, the happier the animators are; if you’re at all iffy and concerned, then it doesn’t free them up to do as much fun stuff, so you have to just go for it and, again, trust the people around you and not be seemingly guarded and numb. Throw caution to the wind a bit.”

— Neil Patrick Harris

61. “Jim Henson was the only piece of fan mail I ever wrote when I was a little kid.”

— Neil Patrick Harris

62. “I love the American musical for the simplicity of emotion that gets expressed.”

— Neil Patrick Harris

63. “Mr. Steven Bochco is a very wise man. After a many-monthed nationwide search to find a precocious teenage doctor, he hired me.”

— Neil Patrick Harris

64. “I pride myself in being able to straddle demographics, and if that was said as Barney Stinson, it would mean a little different thing.”

— Neil Patrick Harris

65. “I’m a games and theory kind of guy. I love puzzles, so it was fun dissecting Shakespeare’s prose.”

— Neil Patrick Harris

66. “I often teach a graduate theater seminar on Greek tragedy in performance. I usually begin by saying that no matter what technological advances occur, the wisdom of these plays will never be obsolete.”

— Neil Patrick Harris

67. “I love the ‘So You Think You Can Dance’ show. I love it. I think it’s some of the best hours on TV.”

— Neil Patrick Harris

68. “The subject of Citizenfour, Edward Snowden, could not be here for some treason.”

— Neil Patrick Harris

69. “I have actual strong ideas. You just have to wait for the right timing. Timing is pretty crucial here. I can’t dedicate a lot of energy and efforts trying to, say, create a show that I want to produce while I’m currently on another show.”

— Neil Patrick Harris

70. “Being able to live my life transparently does empower me to feel like I can be myself more. It’s easier for me to flirt with girls now that girls know that I’m gay. It almost makes it a sexier encounter than if I was trying to pretend that I was straight.”

— Neil Patrick Harris

71. “It PASSED! Marriage equality in NY!! Yes!! Progress!! Thank you everyone who worked so hard on this!! A historic night!”

— Neil Patrick Harris

72. “If I’m doing some weird tick with my mouth, or not standing still or something, I’ll be the first person to notice it, and then want to change that. I think it’s important just to maintain trajectory, to not just use your same tricks over and over.”

— Neil Patrick Harris

73. “I want to be able to infuse some youthful energy and comedy while appreciating the generations before.”

— Neil Patrick Harris

74. “I thought the idea of ‘Smurfs’ lent itself to the 3-D environment pretty well, I think, better than some of the farm animal movies that have been done before. I was a fan of the ‘Smurfs’ and they come with their own fan base, which I thought was nice.”

— Neil Patrick Harris

75. “There are so many examples of talented actors working today, no matter how they live their private lives. I’m lucky that people believe me when I’m in character.”

— Neil Patrick Harris

76. “We’re in such a volatile climate right now politically. I think they didn’t want Assassins to not succeed due to popular opinion and politics, versus on its own merits. I can respect that.”

— Neil Patrick Harris

77. “Before babies, I worked very hard to make sure I understood my surroundings and figured out where I fit in the world, whether it was at work or in a social situation.”

— Neil Patrick Harris

78. “The discipline of live theater – doing the same perfect thing night after night, eight times a week – never ceases to amaze me.”

— Neil Patrick Harris

79. “Thankfully I’ve been quite lucky in my career, but it’s always good to re-evaluate things and think about what else you want to do.”

— Neil Patrick Harris

80. “I’m very interested in starting to produce, and direct, and have an umbrella over an entire project in the future. I’d like to have control over what the characters do. I think as an actor, you get a little too caught up in the moment-to-moment, beat-to-beat stuff to have perspective.”

— Neil Patrick Harris

81. “When you call someone and ask them to do something they’ve never done before, in different mediums I think they would be inclined to pass because they’re afraid of the risk. But the creative people who populate the theater world love the challenge of new things.”

— Neil Patrick Harris

82. “For others, magic is a crisp autumn’s day or a tender hug from a loved one.”

— Neil Patrick Harris

83. “I’ve been very fortunate to go from interesting chapter to interesting chapter. I’ve always enjoyed the process and always enjoyed working more really than the end result of what it achieves. I’m more interested in doing the work.”

— Neil Patrick Harris

84. “I don’t care about my “impact” – I only care about the theater as an art form and criticism as an act of writing.”

— Neil Patrick Harris

85. “I feel like I know where I’m going. And I like where I’m going.”

— Neil Patrick Harris

86. “If I wrote a musical it wouldn’t be about me. Although I do some magic, so it would probably be about a magician who appeared and re-appeared all over the place.”

— Neil Patrick Harris

87. “I collect puppet stuff. I have a puppet workshop in my garage. I was looking for any opportunity to be able to get very creatively involved in that world.”

— Neil Patrick Harris

88. “The theater is reaching as many different demographics as it can now.”

— Neil Patrick Harris

89. “I don’t know, but I think kids just want to be listened to, so I want to make sure I do that.”

— Neil Patrick Harris

90. “As actors you don’t want to have one label. You’d rather have seven.”

— Neil Patrick Harris

91. “Thankfully, the meat of the Tony telecast is the performances from the shows, so the awards show kind of creates itself around the season, and then I fill in based on the vibe of the season in general. I’m happy that there’ll be so many legitimately good performances on the show.”

— Neil Patrick Harris

92. “I sort of pride myself in my dissatisfaction with my work. I’ve always been concerned with buying the hype, and having that make your performances suffer.”

— Neil Patrick Harris

93. “I don’t know, on a sitcom, and in theatre especially, you have to really be listening to an audience. And if you’re losing them, you can hear the sniffs, and the playbills shuffling and whatnot.”

— Neil Patrick Harris

94. “When she is three, you catch her singing Miley Cyrus’s “Wrecking Ball,” a song nobody should sing until they’re at least dead.”

— Neil Patrick Harris

95. “I get to choose things that interest me as opposed to trying to get any job that will have me, which for a vast majority of actors is the case.”

— Neil Patrick Harris

96. “So I’ve done my fair share of theater. I have also been very fortunate in that I’ve been able to come to New York two or three times a year just to see as many shows as possible. I think the live theater culture here is incredible.”

— Neil Patrick Harris

97. “You experience them experiencing pure magic, unadulterated by cynicism or irony or self-consciousness. And as the ride makes its full circle, so do you, until Peter Pan has done it again, and you are once more a child, taking it all in, amazed, overwhelmed, enchanted.”

— Neil Patrick Harris

98. “When you have twin four-year-olds, you are able to dance like a fool, often. And I do.”

— Neil Patrick Harris

99. “If you don’t have any ties to the music industry, you just love ‘American Idol,’ you can sit there and do exactly what you do in your living room, which is stare at them and judge them.”

— Neil Patrick Harris

100. “It’s good to have a lot of once-in-a-lifetimes in your lifetime. If you get the chance to skydive, go skydiving. If you’re offered a part in a weird Shakespeare play in San Diego, slap on some tights and rock out some iambic pentameter.”

— Neil Patrick Harris