Quotes from Robert Picardo

For me, the ideal job as an actor would be something that is intrinsically a drama but to which I could bring in as much humor as possible.

We were second-generation immigrants, and it was luxury enough to go to college. The luxury of the arts was still a generation away.

I'm not really shy.

It's nice to have a signature role.

My favorite thing that I can do with my iPhone is dictate a letter.

If you're looking at my other major science fiction roles - the Doctor on 'Star Trek' and certainly Woolsey on 'Stargate' - I often play characters that might be good theorists and good thinkers, but you wouldn't call either of them very macho characters.

'Star Trek' posited a better future.

Being on 'Star Trek,' you have a funny relationship with fame.

Doing 'Star Trek,' I got to learn about it from the inside out. I got to learn what appealed to them, why sci-fi meant so much to people, why 'Star Trek' meant so much to people.

I didn't realize it at first, but the Doctor is in the same spirit as those natural 'outsider' characters 'Star Trek' series have, like Spock and Data.

'Star Trek' tends to take itself a little too seriously. They were either very dramatic shows, or if we did a humorous show, it was always a little like, 'Oh, we're doing humor on 'Star Trek,'' especially on the original series.

After 'Star Trek,' I was the commander on 'Stargate Atlantis,' the final season, and once my character had become a good commander, I was sorry that the show didn't last beyond that.

'Trek' is probably more cerebral and philosophical. 'Stargate' does seat-of-the-pants adventure and humor better.

'Star Trek' is still my signature role because once you do a 'Star Trek' series, it's never really out of the marketplace.

You play a hologram on 'Star Trek,' and you have to spew line after line. I spoke in paragraphs on 'Star Trek.'

It was hard to make a living as an actor in New York if you did not do soap operas or commercials.

We had great comic mileage in the 'SG-1' episode 'The Swarm,' where Woolsey is running away faster than anybody else.

'Twin Peaks' is like a movie; 'China Beach' is like a movie. These are two of the most cinematic shows on television, and they belong together.

When we shot the pilot for 'Voyager,' Armin Shimmerman, who played Quark on 'Deep Space Nine,' was very gracious and outgoing about preparing us for these personal appearances. Still, nothing really can prepare you for the first time when you walk out on stage and 2,000 people in a room stand up and applaud simply because you're there.

I'll never forget my first moment of looking out on a convention audience with my mouth open like they were kidding me.

No one likes to think of themselves as a one-trick pony as an actor, but on the other hand, it's nice to be part of something that has an international popularity, that is seen literally everywhere in the world and stays in the marketplace forever.

The fact that we were encouraged to follow our conscience and not to follow the crowds - that's something I really miss. On the other hand, there were things that drove me nuts in the '60s. There was an aspect of the hippie movement that everyone is an artist, which is lethal.

I'm not a futurist, and my taste in science fiction was sort of in the gothic horror vein, not space movies and futuristic stuff.

My agent loves me.