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

I think that the mystique of Star Trek, the legend, the mythological proportions of Star Trek, provide something that's missing in people's ... psyche. They yearn, look for, mythology. The Greeks had it to explain things. We don't have it in our civilization. I think that Star Trek provides a myth. It's built like a Greek myth. The leader and his band of men searching the unknown.

Fans have a far richer life than ordinary people understand.

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

To refuse to accept the inevitable is the first step toward obsolescence, and extinction.

Youth is the ultimate limited resource.

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 had a little stove, a toilet, and I’d drive from theater to theater. The only comfort came from my dog, who sat in the passenger seat and gave me perspective on everything. Otherwise, it would have just been me counting my losses.

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.

I wrote a song about success, which I called "It Hasn't Happened Yet." Because success is never there. Success should always be just beyond your grasp.

You never know what you can accomplish until you try. The problem is—what people don’t talk about is—a fair number of times, you fail. You try to climb K2, and you die. But there is a great deal to be gained by trying something that you’re horribly afraid of—because even if you fail, you’ve learned something. You learn that you don’t want to fail again!

I'm not a Starfleet commander, or T. J. Hooker. I don't live on Starship NCC-170... [some audience members say "1"], or own a phaser. I don't know anybody named Bones, Sulu, or Spock [picture of Dr. Benjamin Spock is shown on screen behind him]. And no, I've never had green alien sex, but I'm sure it'd be quite an evening. [Pomp and Circumstance begins playing.] I speak English and French, not Klingon! I drink Labatt's, not Romulan Ale! And when someone says to me 'live long and prosper', I seriously mean it when I say, 'get a life'. My doctor's name is not McCoy, it's Ginsberg [nude picture of Dr. Ginsberg shown on screen]. And tribbles were puppets, not real animals. PUPPETS! And when I speak, I never, ever talk like Every. Word. Is. Its. Own. Sentence. I live in California, but I was raised in Montreal. And I believe in Priceline.com, where you never have to pay full price for airline tickets, hotels, and car rentals! I've appeared on stage at Stratford, at Carnegie Hall, Albert Hall, and the Monkland Theatre in NDG. And, yes, I've gone where no man has gone before, but... I was in Mexico and her father gave me permission! My name is William Shatner, and I am Canadian!

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.

When forced to choose between two equally undesirable options, the only thing to do was to change the rules.

I’ve done nothing. 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.

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've formulated a theory: 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.

We're not responsible for the world we're born into. Only for the world we leave when we die. So we have to accept what's gone before us in the past, and work to change the only thing we can--the future.

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

Nothing lasts. That's what makes everything ... so precious.