William Shatner Quotes

A stage actor has to be 10% aware of the audience as he's performing.

The essence of paint ball is the fact that when you get hit by a ball full of paint, it hurts just enough to say, 'Ow, I gotta get out of the way,' but not enough to say, 'I quit.'

Most people, including myself, keep repeating the same mistakes.

Here's something pompous - you take your day and artistically create it, so every moment has an artistic flavor.

The political scene is already so turgid, it doesn't need more of that from me.

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.

The possibilities that are suggested in quantum physics tell us that everything that we're looking at may not be in fact there, so the underlying nature of being is weird.

Oh, for God's sake... get a life, will you?

I love to go to a movie, get a Diet Coke and a barrel of popcorn, and sit there with my kids and watch a film.

I'm always open to the possibility that somebody's got a better idea than I have. It happens with some frequency.

I've blundered my way through life.

I think of doing a series as very hard work. But then I've talked to coal miners, and that's really hard work.

I did a movie in Esperanto.

My name is William Shatner, and I am Canadian!

I think making a good film shot is joyful.

How do I stay so healthy and boyishly handsome? It's simple. I drink the blood of young runaways.

I enjoyed reading all the classic authors like Isaac Asimov and Bradbury.

Sci-fi films are the epic films of the day because we can no longer put 10,000 extras in the scene - but we can draw thousands of aliens with computers.

My beautiful wife is dead. She meant everything to me. Her laughter, her tears and her joy will remain with me the rest of my life.

Success is different for everyone; everybody defines it in their own way, and that's part of what we do in 'Close Up', finding what it was each person wanted to achieve and what their willingness to sacrifice for that was.

I'm an optimist.

Things people say strike me as amusing, and I am prone to saying out loud what everybody's thinking.

What is down will go up. At the same time, you have to be prepared for what is up to go down.

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.

So many dot-com companies were formulated on air.

Fate gives you the finger and you accept.

We live in grief for having left the womb, for having left the teat, then school, then home. In my case, it was leaving marriages, and the death of my wife.

I'm anxious to make another film.

Yeah, I do stand-up, my own type of stand-up.

I frequently dream of being on these horses' backs and running across a field. And the horse and I are one.

My mother was an exuberant, silly lady.

I think that prog rock is the science fiction of music. Science fiction speculates on what the future might be and look like and how we'll get there, and yet there's always a central theme of humanity, or there should be. Progressive rock has the same concept of exploration into the parts of the music world that hasn't been explored.

One of the advantages of being a captain is being able to ask for advice without necessarily having to take it.

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.

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 you make a fool of yourself, you can do it with dignity, without taking your pants down. And if you do take your pants down, you can still do it with dignity.

If you read my books, especially the Star Trek books and the Quest for Tomorrow books, you'll see in them the core theme of the basic humanistic questions that Star Trek asked.

I don't think of myself as being tied.

I see people putting text messages on the phone or computer and I think, 'Why don't you just call?'

When I did the film Generations, in which the character died, I felt like a guest for the first time. That made me very sad.

A series is filled with compromises.

Gradually the live TV scene simmered out, replaced by film, and that took place in L.A. So many actors left New York.

At 40, I went to bed for three days. I thought my life is over.

No matter how prosaic something is that you've done and been a part of again and again, there is so much more there that you haven't seen.

Captain Kirk has been a source of pleasure and income for a long time.

You need to be silly to be funny.

Success should always be just beyond your grasp.

You know, the process of making a documentary is one of discovery, and like writing a story, you follow a lead and that leads you to something else and then by the time you finish, the story is nothing like you expected.

All any artist can do is please themselves.

I don't watch television.