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.
— William Shatner
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.
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.
My fear is dying badly, through illness or injury. But what a glorious demise it would be to burn up in space.
If someone criticizes my acting, they may be right.
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'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.
The longer I go about living, I see it's the relationship that is most meaningful.
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 like making people laugh. It comes off and shines in everything I do.
I've been in that angst of loneliness, where you're really alone in the universe, except for the dog.
I love technology.
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.
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.
My mother was an exuberant, silly lady.
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.
When I'm interviewing somebody I don't work from prepared questions.
The problem is I don't know anything or anyone. I am so focused on the immediate picture in front of me.
The conundrum of free will and destiny has always kept me dangling.
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 find age such a foreign concept. I have to be reminded. I still have the extraordinary feeling of adventure, striking out into unknown fields.
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 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.
I frequently dream of being on these horses' backs and running across a field. And the horse and I are one.
I see myself as an actor with a love of music.
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.
I spent years doing 'Star Trek' bits and things, and a lot of people loved it, a lot of people mocked it.
I've never been without a dog. I've made trips across the country with a dog.
My name is William Shatner, and I am Canadian!
Yeah, I do stand-up, my own type of stand-up.
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.
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.
At 40, I went to bed for three days. I thought my life is over.
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.
I don't watch television.
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 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.
Regret is the worst human emotion. If you took another road, you might have fallen off a cliff. I'm content.
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?
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.
I love horses. There's something practical and mystical about them.
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.
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.
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've been breeding Dobies for years. Almost won the breed in Westminster at one time.
The great mystery of our consciousness is beyond our grasp.
I am private.
You need to be silly to be funny.
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've never not appeared in front of a live audience for any longer period than a month or two.
