William Shatner Quotations | Page 2

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.

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.

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.

Spencer Tracy was a man who did very much what I do on a set, and that is, he comes down and he does his job, and then he goes back to his dressing room.

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.

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.

We were basically one and the same, although Jim was just about perfect, and, of course, I am perfect.

She is a marvelous addition. She's a big stew bone in the bouillabaisse.

Captain Kirk never burped out his lines, nor did he simply SPEAK! as IF! Every! Other! SYLlable! WAS! of DIRE! ImPORTance!

If someone criticizes my acting, they may be right.

He'd written me a letter and I didn't recognize the name until my children clapped and said, 'You've got to do this,'

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.

This show is about the kind of songs you like and can sing, but you can't remember the artist because maybe they never caught on again. We give those artists some renown.

We wanted to put something definitive down for the record, but the conditions were two friends talking one-on-one. It makes it a revealing, honest interchange of feelings and thoughts that no interview would have been capable of doing.

We went from playing in the very capable minor leagues directly into the major leagues.

When it got radio play, they didn't want a six-minute cut, they wanted a three-minute cut, so they chose the song,

Everything in front of and behind the cameras was faked, ... The only thing that was real is the love we have for Riverside.

Every day I realized I would not be a star.

At that point, looking remarkable healthy, the skunk gave me the finger (I swear!) and casually strolled back into the woods.

Don't just shove food into your mouth. Taste the flavor exploding in your mouth. Appreciate the texture. Honor your food with the time you take.

I spent years doing 'Star Trek' bits and things, and a lot of people loved it, a lot of people mocked it.

I see myself as an actor with a love of music.

I've been breeding Dobies for years. Almost won the breed in Westminster at one time.

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.

All any artist can do is please themselves.

You've got to remember he's only a head, so now he's got these other appendages that he's enjoying a lot. Certain appendages more than others,

It was exciting in that it was the first of the films. Nobody had ever dreamt of it being a major motion picture. Robert Wise was one of the leading lights, one of the great directors, and he was quite a force. And so between the idea of it being a major motion picture and Robert Wise directing, it was an important moment in all our lives.

It's irksome to read about someone I don't recognize. It frightens me.

I wanted to sniff those flowers, and fly!

I'm just quizzical about how things work and why things are.

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.

In the world that we inhabit, having one hit is a lot better than having no hits.

I don't know how to deal with being 80.

Get a life. What have you done with yourselves?

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.

I'm not going to have a tombstone. I'm going to be tossed in the air. Ashes, tossed like a salad.

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.

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

When there are tiers of meaning in an ad it intrigues the audience and they look for it again and again.

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.

What does God need with a starship?

Everyone knows everything about all of us. That's too much knowledge!

My boy, that was a TV show. I used a stunt double. I always use a stunt double. Except in love scenes. I insist on doing those myself.

I love living in Los Angeles.

I'm looking for the perfect paintball movie.

Fate gives you the finger and you accept.

Exercise? A Jew doesn't exercise.

Nobody could have imagined the phenomenon that 'Star Trek' became. It's still almost impossible to imagine.

My site has the whole thing - blogs, information, video interviews.

My name is William Shatner, and I am Canadian!

A series is filled with compromises.

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

There was nothing lonelier than a man with a million friends.

Divorce is simply modern society's version of medieval torture. Except it lasts longer and leaves deeper scars. A divorce releases the most primitive emotions; the ugliest, raw feelings. Emotionally wounded people do their best to inflict pain upon the other party, but rather than using claws they use divorce lawyers.

Careers are here and they're gone. No matter how great we think we are, we're nothing but the temples of Ozymandias-we're ruins in the making.

The idea of being a professional actor never occurred to anybody, including myself, for a long time.

I'm coming little animal!.

My life is my statement and I try to be true to myself and thusly to other people. Whatever my failings are, they are human and I try to perfect it each day.

There were many times when I kept silent about being Jewish as I got older, when Jewish jokes were told.

Somewhere in university, I realized that I hadn't been to classes in months, and I'd get tired to the point of narcolepsy doing anything other than some form of performing, directing, writing, or acting.

I'm interested in man's march into the unknown but to vomit in space is not my idea of a good time. Neither is a fiery crash with the vomit hovering over me.

I think the acting satisfies the need and desire for approval.

I guess the disc jockey thought I was trying to sing or something so ... they had fun with it. But the reality was that it was something, there was a concept behind it.

I had a major in business, and I graduated with a business degree, but I was perhaps the worst student to graduate from that program.

Pain and guilt can't be taken away with the wave of a magic wand. They're the things that we carry with us, they're the things that make us what we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves. I don't want my pain taken away, I need my pain!

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.

I love technology. Matches, to light a fire is really high tech. The wheel is REALLY one of the great inventions of all time. Other than that I am an ignoramus about technology. I once looked for the 'ON' button on the computer and came to find out it was on the back. Then I thought, anyone who would put the 'on' switch on the back, where you can't find it, doesn't do any good for my psyche. The one time I did get the computer on, I couldn't turn the damn thing off!

Even one word, or certainly one sentence, should be able to describe the basic characteristic that the scene has, or the character has, or the story has. And then you begin to detail that one spine, and you have offshoots from that spine, and it becomes more and more complex, but all of it stems from that one-word, one-line theme, which can give the character, the scene, or the play its uniqueness.

I did a movie in Esperanto.

Conquest is easy. Control is not.

I have had mystical experiences with horses. I felt they were communicating with me in horse communication.

So bitcoin is cyber snob currency...

I always thought that the spine of a character was awe and wonder.

You can't do anything about the past. And you don't know what the future is.

Is there a God? There is, but we don't know where. Or who. And, indeed, why.

My dad was good with actions.

Never buy anything that eats while you sleep.

When I was out for the Christmas Holidays in school, I would go skiing up to the mountains and there they had Santa on a sled. Pulled by horses and other reindeer, it was a very, very picturesque time and that struck me very emphatically then and has remained with me all this time.

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.

I think you die the way you live.

Let women figure out why they won't sleep with you. Don't do their work for them.

I love cameras but I find myself reluctantly taking pictures because what's past is past.

I slept for four days when I turned 40.

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.

There's too many people in the world.

Christmas is fun anyway. It's a myth organized over the years and gained different mythological qualities as the years go by.

Has it ever occurred to you that how we deal with death is at least as important as how we deal with life?

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.

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.'

And that works for me. So that if this is it, you better take it at its right proportion. That there are serious things, but most things are temporal and ephemeral, and you should cultivate that attitude. That joy and love and all the verities are what counts. So I try not to take too many things seriously, and if I find myself caught up in the seriousness of the moment, within a period of time, I'm able to cajole myself out of it.

We were basically one and the same, although Jim [Kirk] was just about perfect, and, of course, I am perfect.

My mother was born in the city, my dad was an immigrant. Probably from Germany. Could have been Austria, could have been Poland. The borders were changing. My dad brought over a large family of Shatners when he was very young. Scraped together the money, got 11 brothers and sisters a passage on the boat. There's a lot of Shatners in Montreal.

What part of me was born with the courage to stand in front of strangers and risk rejection?

Don’t waste your time trying to get into my head. There's nothing there.

If there's anything I'm not pompous about, it's myself or my work. But I seem to be able to play it.

I've got rock 'n' roll in my blood.

A true pilot must of necessity pay attention to the seasons, the heavens, the stars, the winds, and everything proper to the craft if he is really to rule a ship.

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?

Everybody has their 15 minutes, and those 15 minutes should be spent in a private limo and a private plane. It's the ultimate.

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