Happy Birthday William Shatner!

All I know is that I am constantly intrigued by something I'm doing.

A series is filled with compromises. 

I'm not out to convince anybody of anything.

I was built for the long run, not for the short dash, I guess.

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.

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.

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. 

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. 

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

I hate flying, flat out hate its guts.

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

I think making a good film shot is joyful. 

I've been approached to do some things with astronauts and the preparation that astronauts go through.

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.

The actor is in the hands of a lot of other people, over which he has no control.

Divorce is probably as painful as death.

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.

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.

I've never not appeared in front of a live audience for any longer period than a month or two.

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

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

Every day I realized I would not be a star. 

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.

I'm surfing the giant life wave. 

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.

I often conduct interviews in my truck. 

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.

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.

My mother was an exuberant, silly lady. 

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

I am private.

If we can clean up our world, I'll bet you we can achieve warp drive. 

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

I love to evoke the bones and meat and thoughts of characters.

The great mystery of our consciousness is beyond our grasp.

I find the whole time travel question very unsettling if you take it to its logical extension. I think it might eventually be possible, but then what happens?

My name is William Shatner, and I am Canadian!

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.

I love technology.

The good life is one that's artistically made.

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

So many dot-com companies were formulated on air.

I've never been without a dog. I've made trips across the country with a dog.

If I'm given an opportunity to do something, I do it. Or else I fool around with it. 

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.

My plan has always been to return to Broadway every 50 years. 

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

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.

I like making people laugh. It comes off and shines in everything I do. 

When I direct and have to look at filmed scenes of myself, I suck.

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.

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.

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 never watched 'Star Trek.' 

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 sometimes find that in interviews you learn more about yourself than the person learned about you.

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

I played comedies and dramas.

I love horses. There's something practical and mystical about them.

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.

Over the years, I've become barraged by comments from people, such as, 'Beam me up, Scotty!' and I became defensive. I felt they were derisive and engendered an attitude. I am grateful for the success, but didn't want to be mocked. 

Getting that audience approval is always a question mark, and it's always that flag that flutters in front of you.

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.

We meet aliens every day who have something to give us. They come in the form of people with different opinions.

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. 

I did a movie in Esperanto.

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. 

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. 

If someone criticizes my acting, they may be right. 

I'm anxious to make another film. 

My fear is dying badly, through illness or injury. But what a glorious demise it would be to burn up in space.

I've been in that angst of loneliness, where you're really alone in the universe, except for the dog.

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 thought I was loved.

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. 

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. 

The conundrum of free will and destiny has always kept me dangling.

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

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 find age such a foreign concept. I have to be reminded. I still have the extraordinary feeling of adventure, striking out into unknown fields.

 I don't watch television.

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.' 

The problem is I don't know anything or anyone. I am so focused on the immediate picture in front of me.

A director is a choreographer, both politically and creatively. 

Fate gives you the finger and you accept.

If saving money is wrong, I don't want to be right!

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

Acting is easier - writing is more creative. The lazy man vies with the industrious.

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.

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.

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.

The name Shatner is Austrian and partly Germanic, and there's Germanic reticence and silence perhaps, but there is passion underneath.

Death is an absolute marvel.

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

I've blundered my way through life.

The longer I go about living, I see it's the relationship that is most meaningful.

Ads need to be little pieces of entertainment. 

The basic quality that any great story must have is a story that illustrates the human condition. 

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

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.

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

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. 

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

Remember - you can't beam through a force field. So, don't try it.

The only subject I know anything about is myself and I don't know that too clearly.

You have to create your life. You have to carve it, like a sculpture.

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

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.

It's very easy to say no to leaving the house. 

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.

I don't read reviews.

You know who I am?! I'm William Tiberius Shatner!

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


My being Jewish does not inform the things I do, necessarily. 'Exodus' is a wonderful piece, no matter what religion you are. 'The Shiva Club,' which is a movie I am attempting to make sometime soon, is about crashing a shiva, if you will. A couple of comics crash a shiva. I could have, I suppose, made it an Irish wake, but the shiva I was more familiar with.

Success should always be just beyond your grasp.

Given the freedom to create, everybody is creative. All of us have an innate, instinctive desire to change our environment, to put our original stamp on this world, to tell a story never told before. I’m absolutely thrilled at the moment of creativity – when suddenly I’ve synthesized my experiences, reality, and my imagination into something entirely new. But most people are too busy working on survival to find the opportunity to create. Fortunately, I’ve been freed by reputation, by the economics of success, and by emotional contentment to turn my ideas into reality. I’ve discovered that the more freedom I have to be creative, the more creative I become.

Well-written words are music.

Being an icon is overrated, remember an icon can be moved by a mouse.

My wife and my three kids and my grandchildren are my life, but my horses and my dogs are everything else. 

What does God need with a starship?

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

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.

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

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

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.

I love living in Los Angeles.

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. 

I don't think in terms of God.

Energy is the key to creativity. Energy is the key to life.

There exists nowhere on Earth a "soulful place" -- everywhere you are, is the soulful place. The entire world is filled with mystical qualities, including your little slice of the world. Paradise and enlightenment are always within your reach. It's joy. And you should work on filling all your years with as much joy as possible.

I believe that when things happen, they happen with a purpose. 

All in all, Kirk's character is something I am very proud of. 

I have been accused of never saying no. 

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. 

I believe in taking what happens as inevitable.

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.

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.

When I'm interviewing somebody I don't work from prepared questions. 

I didn't want to do the sitcom thing, but I didn't know what else to do. 

I'm a performer, comedian, entertainer, writer and director.

My dad was good with actions.

I'm gonna reveal something to you that's going to come as a shock: If you're a stupid young man, you're usually a stupid old man. Most people, including myself, keep repeating the same mistakes.

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

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.

There's too many people in the world. 

Regret is the worst human emotion. If you took another road, you might have fallen off a cliff. I'm content.

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

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

I can't type. Can't do it.

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.

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?

And I enjoyed the celebrity and the creativity that was involved in Star Trek.

Tabloid stuff just offends. 

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 can't stand the gossip of celebrities' lives, all the time! Every minute! 

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.

Writing an acceptance speech gives you the expectation of winning, and you are therefore devastated or hurt if you didn't win.

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. 

My dad died of a stroke.

I also derive a great deal of pleasure from horses and dogs... the ocean... and love.

Exercise? A Jew doesn't exercise. 

I love the concept of togetherness and the entwinement of marriage.

Nature is perfect.

I've got rock 'n' roll in my blood. 

 All any artist can do is please themselves.

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

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

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. 

My understanding is, the fans are so ravenous in Canada, they gnaw on the stars. 

View the list 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'm an optimist.

I'm looking for the perfect paintball movie.

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

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.'

I had been in a Shakespeare company for three years and done a lot of Shakespeare. That was fun. That was interesting. 

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

I don't think of myself as being tied.