William Shatner quotes

William Shatner is a Canadian actor, author, and singer, widely recognized for his role as Captain James T. Kirk in the Star Trek franchise. His career spans over seven decades and encompasses film, television, music, and literature. He continues to influence popular culture and remains an iconic figure in science fiction. Here are 137 of his quotes:

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.

William Shatner

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

William Shatner

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

William Shatner

I love living in Los Angeles.

William Shatner

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

William Shatner

There's too many people in the world.

William Shatner

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.

William Shatner

You, HP, promised me a toxic-free COMPUTER by 2009. Now my friends at Greenpeace tell me that I'll have to wait till 2011. What's up with that?

William Shatner

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.

William Shatner

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.

William Shatner

My big claim to fame during the three years I was at Stratford was understudying Henry V and going on without any rehearsal - and I tell that story in the show. ... Tyrone Guthrie, a great English director of that time, said to me - I was understudying Chris Plummer - and they said, "Plummer's ill. Can you go on?" And I had never rehearsed the part, never spoken the part out loud. And I went on.

William Shatner

They said I was this William Shatner character, and I figured I had to be it, pompous, takes himself seriously, hardheaded. So I played it. But I didn't see it. That character doesn't seem like me to me. I know the real William Shatner.

William Shatner

Science fiction these days is only half a step ahead of science. Astrophysicists and scientists are working in the same way as science fiction writers. They're working things out in their imagination based on the slim scientific facts that they know. Hawking imagines a black hole and then discovers the mathematics that support his theory, and new possibilities come to light. That's the imaginative flair that scientists have to have. For me as a sci-fi writer, spinning those ideas in your mind brings you to the point where you dream in science fiction. Suddenly you think of something in the middle of the night, and it's so vivid you don't need to write it down because you know you'll remember it in the morning. That's what these books, Zero G, reflect: a vivid imagination.

William Shatner

Star Trek never really caught on with audiences, ran for three seasons, and was canceled. I wish I had taken notes at the time, because you people sure do have a lot of questions about it.

William Shatner

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.

William Shatner

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

William Shatner

Ads need to be little pieces of entertainment.

William Shatner

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

William Shatner

I think making a good film shot is joyful.

William Shatner

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.

William Shatner

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

William Shatner

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.

William Shatner