William Shatner
When you've done the technical part, you're then into the joy, the zen, into being. Technology no longer exists for you. You're then into the mystery of the thing you're doing.
I spent years doing 'Star Trek' bits and things, and a lot of people loved it, a lot of people mocked it.
I like making people laugh. It comes off and shines in everything I do.
Instead of playing something heavily, I play it lightly. Since people like to cast cyclically, once you've done one thing, people want to put you in that bag again. And since I want to work, I let it happen.
In entertainment, whether it's movies or television or whatever, I'm a great audience, but I don't remember the names of the people I've seen or the groups that I've heard.
I'm not technically adept at music, but I'd love to be part of a discussion of where progressive rock ends and country music begins.
I see myself as an actor with a love of music.
The longer I go about living, I see it's the relationship that is most meaningful.
I frequently dream of being on these horses' backs and running across a field. And the horse and I are one.
I didn't realize that, in doing a documentary, there is this process of discovery. It's not like a film or a play with a set script. It sort of reveals itself.
Voice acting is very interesting, I've done several animated projects, and you have to make the voice reflect the character and try and do as much with a word as you can with a look in a live-action film.
If someone criticizes my acting, they may be right.
I am not a Starfleet commander, or T.J. Hooker. I don't live on Starship NCC-1701, or own a phaser. And I don't know anybody named Bones, Sulu, or Spock.
With three kids, it was always very, very tight, and it was always a scramble for what was my next job. So I learned never to go into debt because I don't want those monthly payments to preoccupy my thoughts.
I was always working. Maybe you weren't aware of the movies I was making, or the television I was doing, or the shows I was creating, or the books I was writing; there have been thirty. But I have always been solidly at work, running as fast as I can.
The problem is I don't know anything or anyone. I am so focused on the immediate picture in front of me.
I watch movies and sports. I can count on the fingers of my hand the number of times I have watched an hour show. I never watch a half-hour show, and I never watch myself.
I did some professional radio acting as a teenager, and I essentially put myself through college with radio acting in Montreal. When I graduated, I got jobs in professional theatres, repertory, and stock theatres in Canada for a couple of years. And then I went to Stratford, Ontario, where I spent three years with a Shakespeare company. We took a classical play from Stratford to New York City, and I got some good notices there and essentially stayed and did live television. And that brings you to the beginning of filming.Collection: New York
Don't be afraid of making an ass of yourself. I do it all the time and look what I got.Collection: Looks
Don’t waste your time trying to get into my head. There's nothing there.Collection: Trying
A pretty girl is certainly comparable to a good horse.Collection: Girl
You have to continuously fail. You fail at something, then you get over it, then you fail some more. And after you fail, there's always something new there. And that something new can be really interesting.Collection: Interesting
I'm so not ready to die. It petrifies me. I go alone. I go to a place I don't know. It might be painful. It might be the end. My thought is that it is the end. I become nameless, and I spent a lifetime being known.Collection: Death
Let women figure out why they won't sleep with you. Don't do their work for them.Collection: Sleep
Being an icon is overrated, remember an icon can be moved by a mouseCollection: Icons
I don't want people to know me. I want them to believe my version.Collection: Believe
You might as well aim high. Why shoot yourself in the foot when you can shoot yourself in the head?Collection: Feet
There was nothing lonelier than a man with a million friends.Collection: Loneliness
We were basically one and the same, although Jim Kirk was just about perfect, and, of course, I am perfect.Collection: Perfect
Mysteries simply are a feast for an active mind. And while in my lifetime I've seen science make extraordinary inroads into solving the most complex questions of life, after all this time I admit that I am thrilled that there are some things that forever will remain a mystery. For example, do I wear a toupee?Collection: Forever
Within weeks of our premiere, it became obvious that Leonard [Nimoy] and the character of Spock were becoming something of a national phenomenon. ... And to be unflatteringly frank, it bugged me. ... [Then, Gene Roddenberry] said to me the wisest thing he could possibly have uttered. He said, `Don't ever fear having good and popular people around you, because they can only enhance your own performance. The more you can play to these people, the better the show.'Collection: Philosophical
Youth is the ultimate limited resource.Collection: Limited Resources
Your cadence is your music.Collection: Cadence
A sense of the unknown has always lured mankind and the greatest of the unknowns of today is outer space. The terrors, the joys and the sense of accomplishment are epitomized in the space program.Collection: Space
The more powerful the villain is the more powerful the hero.Collection: Powerful
We're all embers from the same fire. Our ember winks out, we're ashes, we go back to the fire.Collection: Fire
I slept for four days when I turned 40.Collection: Four
Stop and smell the garlic! That's all you have to do.Collection: Smell
Conquest is easy. Control is not.Collection: Easy
Memories were the markers of the journey through life. It was necessary to know where you had come from. Only then could you know where you were going.Collection: Memories
There were many times when I kept silent about being Jewish as I got older, when Jewish jokes were told.Collection: Silent
Oh, for God's sake... get a life, will you?Collection: Sake
I'm not going to have a tombstone. I'm going to be tossed in the air. Ashes, tossed like a salad.Collection: Tombstone
Has it ever occurred to you that how we deal with death is at least as important as how we deal with life?Collection: Death
What have I done? I've blundered my way through life. So I have my picture on the wall. The minute I die, that picture will start to yellow and fade and eventually be gone. Blown in the wind and become part of the molecular structure of something else. These things we see as "success," they're non-accomplishments.Collection: Success
What does God need with a starship?Collection: Captain Kirk
The pictures remind you of something that can never be recaptured, the time is gone, the only thing you know is the present. That's all that's knowable and even the present isn't knowable. The present becomes the past... so you really don't know anything.Collection: Past
You can't do anything about the past. And you don't know what the future is.Collection: Past
I don't Twitter. I can't even remember my password name. I have problems with electronics, so what I've done is hire a young man out of college, whose very fingers are the extension of computer keys, and he Twitters. He does the mechanics, but I very carefully modulate what is said and have used Twitter to publicize stuff, have conversations and instigate competition.Collection: College