Quotes from John de Lancie

The best movie for me is a science fiction movie, the best books for me are science fiction books. I love this stuff.

The problem with Alien Voices 'was we had four really terrific years. And then it began to be about selling: Simon & Schuster wanted whatever, 40,000 units sold a year.'

You have to risk to get ahead The person whos always hugging the tree trunk and never walking out onto the skinny branches will never succeed. Sometimes you have to walk out onto the skinny branches, and that means having goals, taking a risk.

My first interaction with Gene was that after I auditioned I walked out of the room and then this big guy walks out with me, and he puts his hand on my shoulder and he says, 'You make my words sound better than they are.' And I said, 'Well, you must be the writer.' And he said 'I'm Gene Roddenberry.' And I had no idea who that was.

I don't physically enjoy watching TV. I don't enjoy the commercials.

I was raised on the classics - Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and others.

No technology comes close to the effect of a live symphony orchestra.

I got a call from my agent saying you have an offer to voice a cartoon by the name of 'My Little Pony.' And that's pretty much what went in my ear. So I asked him the three questions that actors always ask. I need to see the script, when and how much, which were legitimate questions.

Star Trek' ushered in the end of the Westerns. Then the canvas switched to the sci-fi canvas.

I'm never what anybody envisions as the prototype of a character. My looks are just odd enough so that I'm just not what people think of.

Q is a terrific part.

I had a panic attack years ago in preparation for a very difficult show. And you cannot hear, or see, or you can't compute. It's quite terrifying.

I sail to Hawaii and back a lot, and it sometimes involves very terrifying experiences. And you have to keep yourself from becoming panicky.

'Petrushka' was not conceived as a children's ballet, even though it involves puppets. We're on the outer limits of what's child-appropriate here.

I'm sure Roddenberry in his wildest dreams never would have thought he would have gotten five TV series out of his idea.

The way you can see what an actor brings to a role is you turn the sound off. Everything else becomes subtext, the wink and the nod, and the attitude and all that kind of stuff is a little easier to see with the sound off.

Certainly when 'Legend' came around, I was very anxious to get it because I immediately recognized it as something worth doing.

I'd be happy to have run rehearsals for a month, but it gets expensive to do that.

I kind of pride myself in the fact that when people hire me it's always considered creative casting.

Being idly hanging around, and that's not good for an actor to do.

It's not like I go around trying to imprint all the characters I play with Q.

The perspective is that one week out of the year does not a career make nor enough income make.

There's something inherently life-denying in television and radio and stuff that's canned.

Before television, there was a piano in many homes in this country. People played instruments on an amateur level and because of that, they became informed amateurs. We've lost that.