Quotes from Patrick Stewart

I wouldn't know a space-time continuum or warp core breach if they got into bed with me.

I am not the archetypal leading man. This is mainly for one reason: as you may have noticed, I have no hair.

I do what I do in my mother's name because I couldn't help her then. Now I can.

I always have been optimistic about humanity's future. Always. Even at the most dismaying of times.

I began directing episodes, which was a great light every couple of months. We never short-changed our audience, but it became something that you had to work at rather than something that was a pleasure.

Last Wednesday, I stupidly dropped my iPhone in the bath, and my life has sort of spiraled almost out of control.

I certainly wanted to maintain some sense of mystery about Picard and that's why we never allowed certain situations to fully evolve, like the relationship between Picard and Beverly Crusher.

I've often reflected on this in the past weeks as I've been following the presidential campaign: Very often, I thought it would have been great for both of these guys to sit down and be force-fed a couple of dozen episodes of Star Trek.

Encouraging people to believe in it was the most important thing of all. It's one of the reasons I was always uncomfortable whenever film crews came on the set to shoot things. I didn't want our make-believe to be exposed.

Whenever the lion fish in the fish tank in the captain's ready room died it was always a sad moment.

Creating a believable world on the ship was very important, and technically they got better and better and better at showing the ship too.

I never had teenage years. I guess because I was seen to be more adult than anybody around me.

Having spent so much of my life with Shakespeare's world, passions and ideas in my head and in my mouth, he feels like a friend—someone who just went out of the room to get another bottle of wine.

I like things that are funny - in everyday conversation, in incidents that you see, in watching TV or watching film. Comedy has always had an impact on my life.

The only still center of my life is Macbeth. To go back to doing this bloody, crazed, insane mass-murderer is a huge relief after trying to get my cell phone replaced.

William Shatner has one style. We have completely contrasting personalities. We're very good friends. I adore him, but we're very different people, so they were smart enough to write characters that reflected that.

Wouldn't it be grand if we thought that theater could have that impact on the political life of a country?

The knights of the theater represented to me not only the pinnacle of the profession but the esteem in which the profession was held. To find myself, to my astonishment, in that company is the grandest thing that has professionally happened to me.

I am told that there have been over the years a number of experiments taking place in places like Massachusetts Institute of Technology that have been entirely based on concepts raised by Star Trek.

As time went on, I did campaign to lighten the character a little bit, to introduce some romance into the episodes, outside activities, horse riding and fencing and mountaineering.

I wasn't campaigning for a role in a Hollywood television series, it was a fluke. So you've got to have a measure of good luck, you really have, being in the right place at the right time.

All I ever wanted to do was be on stage, if possible acting in Shakespeare. And to be as good as I could be.

It still frightens me a little bit to think that so much of my life was totally devoted to Star Trek and almost nothing else.

Having played many roles of scientific intellect I do have an empathy for that world. It's been hard on me because flying the Enterprise for seven years in Star Trek and sitting in Cerebro in X-men has led people to believe that I know what I'm talking about. But I'm still trying to work out how to operate the air conditioning unit on my car.