William shatner quotes

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

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.

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

I've discovered that the more freedom I have to be creative, the more creative I become.

Mythology needs heroes and it needs villains, it needs heroes to fail, it needs heroes to struggle.

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

There's too many people in the world.

A sense of the unknown has always lured mankind and the greatest of the unknowns of today is outer space. The terrors, the joys and the sense of accomplishment are epitomized in the space program.

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.

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

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

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

The truth can't be hidden for long.

I'm anxious to make another film.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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 don't Twitter. I can't even remember my password name. I have problems with electronics, so what I've done is hire a young man out of college, whose very fingers are the extension of computer keys, and he Twitters. He does the mechanics, but I very carefully modulate what is said and have used Twitter to publicize stuff, have conversations and instigate competition.

Divorce is probably as painful as death.

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.

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

A pretty girl is certainly comparable to a good horse.

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

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

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

We're all embers from the same fire. Our ember winks out, we're ashes, we go back to the fire. I like that image. There has to be a unifying theory. I think there is a continuity of some kind, that my love for my wife will go on past the death of my body. Nature is perfect.

The pictures remind you of something that can never be recaptured, the time is gone, the only thing you know is the present. That's all that's knowable and even the present isn't knowable. The present becomes the past... so you really don't know anything.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Don't be afraid of making an ass of yourself. I do it all the time and look what I got.

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

Fate gives you the finger and you accept.

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

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

You need to be silly to be funny.

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.

My mother was an exuberant, silly lady.

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.

The great mystery of our consciousness is beyond our grasp.

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

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

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.

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 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 supernatural is a catch-all for everything we don't understand about the vast other parts of life that we cannot perceive.

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?

I think you die the way you live.

I've never been without a dog. I've made trips across the country with a dog. I've been in that angst of loneliness, where you're really alone in the universe, except for the dog.

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

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

The good life is one that's artistically made.

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.

What does God need with a starship?

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

The more powerful the villain is the more powerful the hero.

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.

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

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.'

I did a movie in Esperanto.

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

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

People have an affinity towards things, and you don't know where it comes from. Mozart wrote a symphony when he was four, so it's said; the theory is maybe because his father was a conductor, it happened in vitro, and he heard the music before he was born, and by the age of four he knew how to write music.

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

Exercise? A Jew doesn't exercise.

You might as well aim high. Why shoot yourself in the foot when you can shoot yourself in the head?

Success should always be just beyond your 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.

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

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

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

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

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

I love living in Los Angeles.

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.

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

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

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

Conquest is easy. Control is not.

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.

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

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

Stop and smell the garlic! That's all you have to do.

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

I'm not out to convince anybody of anything.

I never watched 'Star Trek.'

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 slept for four days when I turned 40.

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.

I think making a good film shot is joyful.

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

We're all embers from the same fire. Our ember winks out, we're ashes, we go back to the fire.

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.

Ads need to be little pieces of entertainment.

My name is William Shatner, and I am Canadian!

I don't want people to know me. I want them to believe my version.

Death is an absolute marvel.

Youth is the ultimate limited resource.

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

I existed before Star Trek. I started in live television. I was there when the cameras were as big as a table, had internal fans that were whirring and tubes that, because of the heat, had to come right up to our face for a close-up. Now, we are talking about green screen and putting us in locations that we'll never visit. What has happened to us is a miracle, and the miracle is our inventiveness. The tragedy of our lives is also our inventiveness.

I am curious about many things, and find the world around me, and the people and objects and things in it, equally fascinating. There is a great deal of that awe and wonder in me.

Your cadence is your music.

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.

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.

A director is a choreographer, both politically and creatively.

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

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

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.