A director is a choreographer, both politically and creatively.
A series is filled with compromises.
A stage actor has to be 10% aware of the audience as he’s performing.
A tree you pass by every day is just a tree. If you are to closely examine what a tree has and the life a tree has, even the smallest thing can withstand a curiosity, and you can examine whole worlds.
Acting is easier – writing is more creative. The lazy man vies with the industrious.
Ads need to be little pieces of entertainment.
All any artist can do is please themselves.
All I know is that I am constantly intrigued by something I’m doing.
All in all, Kirk’s character is something I am very proud of.
Although I’m a business major out of McGill University, I know nothing… but then I found out much later in life, nobody knows anything.
And I enjoyed the celebrity and the creativity that was involved in Star Trek.
At 40, I went to bed for three days. I thought my life is over.
Babies have big heads and big eyes, and tiny little bodies with tiny little arms and legs. So did the aliens at Roswell! I rest my case.
But if you want to know the truth, the weirdest thing that has happened has been my discovery that people who attend the conventions are filled with love.
Captain Kirk has been a source of pleasure and income for a long time.
Divorce is probably as painful as death.
Energy is the key to creativity. Energy is the key to life.
Every day I realized I would not be a star.
Every piece of entertainment is made with the idea that ‘This is going to be terrific’ and ‘This is the best thing I’ve ever done’ and then it hits the public and then the public tells you whether it’s good or bad.
Everybody has their 15 minutes, and those 15 minutes should be spent in a private limo and a private plane. It’s the ultimate.
Exercise? A Jew doesn’t exercise.
Fate gives you the finger and you accept.
Getting that audience approval is always a question mark, and it’s always that flag that flutters in front of you.
Gradually the live TV scene simmered out, replaced by film, and that took place in L.A. So many actors left New York.
Here’s something pompous – you take your day and artistically create it, so every moment has an artistic flavor.
How do I stay so healthy and boyishly handsome? It’s simple. I drink the blood of young runaways.
I also derive a great deal of pleasure from horses and dogs… the ocean… and love.
I am private.
I believe in taking what happens as inevitable.
I believe that when things happen, they happen with a purpose.
I can’t stand the gossip of celebrities’ lives, all the time! Every minute!
I can’t type. Can’t do it.
I did a movie in Esperanto.
I didn’t want to do the sitcom thing, but I didn’t know what else to do.
I don’t know how I got to this point but it must be as a result of everything that has come before so if I were to change something, I might not be at this point now.
I don’t know how to deal with being 80.
I don’t read reviews.
I don’t think in terms of God.
I don’t think of myself as being tied.
I enjoyed reading all the classic authors like Isaac Asimov and Bradbury.
I envy the people who say, ‘oh, well, I’ve got my name in the golden book and I’m going to be entered into the pearly gates.’
I had been in a Shakespeare company for three years and done a lot of Shakespeare. That was fun. That was interesting.
I hate flying, flat out hate its guts.
I have been accused of never saying no.
I have tinnitus.
I know very little about the viral, electronic world, but I use Twitter to communicate not only information that I think some of the fans want to hear about but also ideas.
I love living in Los Angeles.
I love technology.
I love the concept of togetherness and the entwinement of marriage.
I love to evoke the bones and meat and thoughts of characters.
I never watched ‘Star Trek.’
I often conduct interviews in my truck.
I played comedies and dramas.
I see people putting text messages on the phone or computer and I think, ‘Why don’t you just call?’
I sometimes find that in interviews you learn more about yourself than the person learned about you.
I think making a good film shot is joyful.
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 think the acting satisfies the need and desire for approval.
I think the supernatural is a catch-all for everything we don’t understand about the vast other parts of life that we cannot perceive.
I thought I was loved.
I was built for the long run, not for the short dash, I guess.
If I’m given an opportunity to do something, I do it. Or else I fool around with it.
If saving money is wrong, I don’t want to be right!
If we can clean up our world, I’ll bet you we can achieve warp drive.
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’m a performer, comedian, entertainer, writer and director.
I’m always open to the possibility that somebody’s got a better idea than I have. It happens with some frequency.
I’m an optimist.
I’m anxious to make another film.
I’m just quizzical about how things work and why things are.
I’m looking for the perfect paintball movie.
I’m not out to convince anybody of anything.
I’m surfing the giant life wave.
In my proudest moments, I think I had a real hand in the creative force of making “Star Trek.” But most of the time, I don’t think about it.
It was the early 1970s and I was recently divorced. I had three kids and was totally broke. I managed to find work back east on the straw-hat circuit – summer stock – but couldn’t afford hotels, so I lived out of the back of my truck, under a hard shell.
It’s irksome to read about someone I don’t recognize. It frightens me.
It’s very easy to say no to leaving the house.
I’ve been approached to do some things with astronauts and the preparation that astronauts go through.
I’ve blundered my way through life.
I’ve got rock ‘n’ roll in my blood.
I’ve never not appeared in front of a live audience for any longer period than a month or two.
Marriage is a reflection of your life in general: how you treat people, how you argue, how secure you are in your own thoughts. How vehemently do you argue your point of view? With what disdain do you view the other’s point of view?
Montreal is a very cosmopolitan, sophisticated, erudite, educated, glorious city today. But it wasn’t quite that way when I was growing up there. There was a lot of anti-Semitism. And I had to deal with that in an area of the city that had very few Jews.
Most people, including myself, keep repeating the same mistakes.
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.
My dad died of a stroke.
My dad was good with actions.
My kids say if there’s any family dinner that doesn’t result in somebody crying, it’s not a good dinner. They cry because it helps relieve them of a guilt or some onerous emotional burden. It’s like a family tradition.
My mother was an exuberant, silly lady.
My name is William Shatner, and I am Canadian!
My plan has always been to return to Broadway every 50 years.
My site has the whole thing – blogs, information, video interviews.
My understanding is, the fans are so ravenous in Canada, they gnaw on the stars.
My wife and my three kids and my grandchildren are my life, but my horses and my dogs are everything else.
Nature is perfect.
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.
No, I don’t regret anything at this point. That may change on the next phone call, but at the moment I don’t regret anything.
Nobody could have imagined the phenomenon that ‘Star Trek’ became. It’s still almost impossible to imagine.
Oh, for God’s sake… get a life, will you?
One of the advantages of being a captain is being able to ask for advice without necessarily having to take it.
Remember – you can’t beam through a force field. So, don’t try it.
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.
So many dot-com companies were formulated on air.
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.
Success should always be just beyond your grasp.
Tabloid stuff just offends.
The ability to breathe the air and drink the water will be what the wars will be about from here on in. And it’s coming with alarming rapidity.
The actor is in the hands of a lot of other people, over which he has no control.
The basic quality that any great story must have is a story that illustrates the human condition.
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.’
The good life is one that’s artistically made.
The great mystery of our consciousness is beyond our grasp.
The mysteriousness and mystique of space is such, that science fiction attempts to tantalize you by telling you a story that could possibly be out there and that’s the appeal of science fiction.
The name Shatner is Austrian and partly Germanic, and there’s Germanic reticence and silence perhaps, but there is passion underneath.
The only subject I know anything about is myself and I don’t know that too clearly.
The political scene is already so turgid, it doesn’t need more of that from me.
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.
There’s a joy and a pain about directing where the dreams you have are becoming concrete but the attention to detail, the need for time is such that it’s overwhelming at times, and the stream of responsibility.
There’s an ecstasy about doing something really good on film: the composition of a shot, the drama within the shot, the texture… It’s palpable.
There’s too many people in the world.
These people who come to Comic-Con and dress up – all across the country, the rest of the population who doesn’t understand are scoffing at them.
Things people say strike me as amusing, and I am prone to saying out loud what everybody’s thinking.
This is my saddest story: In grade school, they would have us open our Valentine’s cards and read them out loud. I always sent cards to myself because nobody else did.
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.
We meet aliens every day who have something to give us. They come in the form of people with different opinions.
Well-written words are music.
What is down will go up. At the same time, you have to be prepared for what is up to go down.
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.
When I direct and have to look at filmed scenes of myself, I suck.
When I’m interviewing somebody I don’t work from prepared questions.
When there are tiers of meaning in an ad it intrigues the audience and they look for it again and again.
Why does the lizard stick his tongue out? The lizard sticks its tongue out because that’s the way its listening and looking and tasting its environment. It’s its means of appreciating what’s in front of it.
Writing an acceptance speech gives you the expectation of winning, and you are therefore devastated or hurt if you didn’t win.
Writing is truly a creative art – putting word to a blank piece of paper and ending up with a full-fledged story rife with character and plot.
Yeah, I do stand-up, my own type of stand-up.
You and I and everybody in show business and the entertainment industry fly by the seat of our pants. We don’t know quite what is going to happen.
You have to create your life. You have to carve it, like a sculpture.
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.
You need to be silly to be funny.
