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.

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 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.'

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.

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 think one of the worst notes I think I've ever received was Ang Lee on 'Brokeback Mountain.' He came in on coverage, and he was like, 'More, more handsome.' I was like, 'I'll try that.'

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?'

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.

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 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.

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

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

I love taking people on that journey, which I feel like can open them up to seeing human beings a little more complexly. People that you originally don't like, maybe they have reasons for the way they are, and maybe we can start to understand each other a little better as opposed to being quick to judge and dismiss people.

The fact that I got famous and became a sex symbol around my normal, frumpy, love-handled self is so gratifying - and, dare I say, culturally gratifying as well.

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

Untangling Christmas lights is the true tragedy of 'Stranger Things.'

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.

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

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.

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.'

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

All of Aaron Sorkin's characters are so smart.

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

At the end of the day, what I try to bring to villainous characters is a sense of humanity.

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.

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.

Myself, I suffer from loneliness. And I think we all feel alone. I'm looking for stories that help people deal with loneliness and help them if they are monsters: they don't have to undertake monstrous actions. And maybe they're not monsters.

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

I feel, in storytelling, people are so afraid that you won't get it unless you pound them over the head.

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 really like big swashbuckling superhero films, but I feel like that Marvel universe is not adult enough.

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 can like Jack Nicolson's Joker, and I can like Heath Ledger's Joker. There's other Jokers I don't have to like.

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

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.

The Duffer Brothers are so attentive to story and detail while being wildly respectful of me and what I bring to the process.

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

The perils of success at a young age is being afraid to make a mistake.

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.

I think that storytelling, at its essence, allows us to feel like we all suffer the same insanity or a similar insanity of existence: that nobody escapes scot-free. We're all going to wind up - at the best-case scenario - 80, 85, 90, broken, in pain, and feeling like it was all a dream and not really understanding the point of any of it.

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'm a man. I'm not gonna wear dad jeans or whatever you call them.

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

I don't associate success with happiness, and I don't take it to heart, like, 'Oh, I'm so special.'

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'm terrified of the ocean. I think it's beautiful and magical, but I never go in. That deep, dark water, with no understanding of what goes on behind it - I think that's a metaphor for a lot of things.

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.

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