John Wesley Shipp

“When I first heard about 'The Flash,' I said, 'No thanks.' I thought I'd just be running around in a union suit.”

“It blows my mind when they call me the O.G. Flash.”

“Change does happen, you know?”

“I didn't graduate. I was doing theater in Michigan the summer after my junior year and just moved on to New York.”

“My dad, he would go through these periods of self-doubt. We'd do something that was controversial or that wasn't welcomed by everybody, and he'd go, 'Well, Shirley, our parents cursed us with ethics, and we passed it on to our children.'”

“Comic books have gone mainstream. The audience is there.”

“If tolerance is the best we can do in this moment, then by all means let's be tolerant. But by stopping there, by merely tolerating each other, we miss so much.”

“I had delusions of being a 'serious actor,' and I wanted to pursue those delusions.”

“I think that whole aura of marriage and family is desirable, especially when you're involved in this kind of business. You want that security in your personal life.”

“I never want to give up the stage.”

“The stage is bigger than life. There you are projecting to an audience. In television, you're drawing the camera in to you. And with TV, there isn't that immediate feedback from an audience. You do hours and hours of taping and never get that response.”

“I don't want The Flash to become a vigilante. I don't want him to abuse the power.”

“Inside the magic of the comic book universe, it's just people to people, unguarded humanity overlapping and just getting to interact. The way we get our verdict is going to these conventions.”

“Whatever I had to prove in the 'Flash' world about myself as an actor, I proved as Henry Allen.”