I'm a big fan of public trust.
— David Harbour
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 love to watch human beings figuring out their limitations.
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.
The more I work in the film business, the more I see that those guys, the directors, have the most fun on set.
I think I'm very hard on myself. I think I've always been very hard on myself since I was a kid.
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.
I feel, in storytelling, people are so afraid that you won't get it unless you pound them over the head.
If acting has any meaning, it is so that we can have greater empathy for other people.
All of Aaron Sorkin's characters are so smart.
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.'
I'm a bit of a strange human being - I love to work. I love art. I love self-expression.
We are united in that we are all human beings, and we are all together on this horrible, painful, joyous, exciting, and mysterious ride that is being alive.
Life really is too short.
All the work I do is personal, so the good stuff and the bad stuff that you see in there is all good stuff and bad stuff that I have, and part of the journey, for me, has been to embrace these things that I find embarrassing about myself: my stubbornness, my ego, my maudlin-ness - these things that I see myself do, and I go, 'Oh, David, stop that!'
I try to keep it separate as I can, but also, I'm not going to live my life in complete privacy. If I'm feeling something, I'm going to live my life. I will not hide things.
I don't want to do procedural: I want to do longform.
Always, with speeches, I feel like it's an opportunity to say something.
The Duffer Brothers are so attentive to story and detail while being wildly respectful of me and what I bring to the process.
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.'
The perils of success at a young age is being afraid to make a mistake.
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.'
I really like big swashbuckling superhero films, but I feel like that Marvel universe is not adult enough.
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 was sober for, like, a year and a half, and I was 25, and I actually did have a manic episode, and I was diagnosed as bipolar.
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.
Untangling Christmas lights is the true tragedy of 'Stranger Things.'
If you are misunderstood, I want you to know that I feel the same way.
I think that's what 'Stranger Things' does, it opens you up - it has a real beating heart to it.
I can like Michael Keaton's Batman, and I can like Christian Bale's Batman.
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.
People are more complicated than you give them credit for.
As much as I can, I like to curate the information the people know personally about me.
I'm normally a pretty loquacious, kind of fun person.
Never take advice, including this.
I've always been passionate about the stories I want to tell.
A lot of the characters I gravitate towards feel like outsiders.
I don't associate success with happiness, and I don't take it to heart, like, 'Oh, I'm so special.'
I was very resistant to my intellectualism for a while. I do start with an intellectual idea for a character. A lot of the times, it'll be the opposite of what I feel like is on the page, or it'll be just an idea that I read in a psychology textbook or in a philosophy book. I'll apply something to it that I can start to tinker with.
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.
I'm very interested in the drama of the leading man being someone who is incapable, becoming capable.
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.
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.
It's, like, weird to watch a human being develop.
I actually went back and watched all of 'True Detective''s Season One again, which I think is a true masterpiece.
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.
I can like Jack Nicolson's Joker, and I can like Heath Ledger's Joker. There's other Jokers I don't have to like.
People are three-dimensional. They're not good or bad. They're not righteous or unrighteous. They are a million different things.
It was always my dream to be a New York theater actor. I never thought I was pretty enough to be on camera.
The one thing I can say about the 'Stranger Things' cast that I don't often feel when I do television and movies is that every single actor on that show that I've interacted with is a good-hearted person.
