The Good Quote
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Home
Authors
Patrick Stewart
English
Actor
About the author
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.
Patrick Stewart,
English
Actor
#Life
#Nothing
It wasn't until the first season ended that I went to my first Star Trek convention. It was in Denver. There were two and a half thousand people there.
Patrick Stewart,
English
Actor
#People
#First
Creating a believable world on the ship was very important, and technically they got better and better and better at showing the ship too.
Patrick Stewart,
English
Actor
#World
I came to feel very, very sentimental about those sets, which is ludicrous, because they represent everything which is transitory and insubstantial. It's absurd that one should feel sentimental about timber and canvas.
Patrick Stewart,
English
Actor
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.
Patrick Stewart,
English
Actor
#Work
#Light
#Pleasure
#Months
I became a better listener than I ever had been as a result of playing Jean Luc Picard because it was one of the things that he does terrifically well.
Patrick Stewart,
English
Actor
#Result
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.
Patrick Stewart,
English
Actor
#Years
#Technology
I am not the archetypal leading man. This is mainly for one reason: as you may have noticed, I have no hair.
Patrick Stewart,
English
Actor
#May
#Man
#Leading
#Hair
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.
Patrick Stewart,
English
Actor
#Life
#World
#Friend
#Ideas
#Shakespeare
#Wine
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.
Patrick Stewart,
English
Actor
#People
#Work
#Years
#World
#Trying
#Car
#Talking
#Intellect
#Flying
#Empathy
For seven years I did very little theatre, and I have to make up some time.
Patrick Stewart,
English
Actor
#Time
#Years
#Theatre
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.
Patrick Stewart,
English
Actor
#Want
#Film
#People
#Encouraging
During my time we had two chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, at different times of course, on the bridge, both of whom asked my permission to sit on the captain's chair.
Patrick Stewart,
English
Actor
#Time
But as I grew up as a child, falling in love with the theater and Shakespeare, my heroes were Sir Laurence Olivier and Sir John Gielgud.
Patrick Stewart,
English
Actor
#Love
#Shakespeare
#Theater
#Heroes
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.
Patrick Stewart,
English
Actor
#Character
#Time
#Romance
As the captain, I was going to be having the dominant role in most of the episodes, and that was appealing. I wasn't interested in coming to Hollywood to sit around.
Patrick Stewart,
English
Actor
#Hollywood
During the course of the seven years I played scenes with an oil slick, I played a scene with a grain of rice. Sometimes with indescribable creatures. I remember having a conversation with something which was simply a smell, that's all. It was part of our job.
Patrick Stewart,
English
Actor
#Years
#Job
#Conversation
#Oil
The truth of the matter is, all of those guys on Star Trek: The Next Generation actually want to be me. These impersonations they do are just some way of trying to feel what it must be like to be me. And I understand that! Because it feels really good to be Patrick Stewart!
Patrick Stewart,
English
Actor
#Want
#Trying
#Truth
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.
Patrick Stewart,
English
Actor
#Sense
#Mystery
You get all of your neuroses worked out on stage. I haven't actually played very many nice characters, certainly not on stage. It's not a quality that attracts me.
Patrick Stewart,
English
Actor
#Quality
Wouldn't it be grand if we thought that theater could have that impact on the political life of a country?
Patrick Stewart,
English
Actor
#Life
#Thought
#Country
#Theater
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.
Patrick Stewart,
English
Actor
#People
#Style
#Friends
Whenever the lion fish in the fish tank in the captain's ready room died it was always a sad moment.
Patrick Stewart,
English
Actor
#Fish
We've heard from many teachers that they used episodes of Star Trek and concepts of Star Trek in their science classrooms in order to engage the students.
Patrick Stewart,
English
Actor
#Science
#Teachers
#Students
#Order
We had some very distinguished fans: I know one chancellor of a major university who used to schedule his meetings around Star Trek. We were thrilled to discover that Frank Sinatra was a big fan.
Patrick Stewart,
English
Actor
#Meetings
#University
There are several books that I have-the Physics of Star Trek, Star Trek and Business, there are manuals on command style and countless scholarly papers that have been written about the significance of Next Generation.
Patrick Stewart,
English
Actor
#Style
#Books
#Business
#Physics
The studio have always claimed that the ship is the star of the show, especially when they're renegotiating contracts.
Patrick Stewart,
English
Actor
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.
Patrick Stewart,
English
Actor
#Life
#Trying
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.
Patrick Stewart,
English
Actor
#Theater
#Profession
#Company
Roddenberry had created quite a complex and at times mysterious character. Guarded, cautious, careful in showing his feelings in expressing his ideas about many things - I found that very interesting.
Patrick Stewart,
English
Actor
#Character
#Ideas
#Feelings
One of the things that I've come to understand is that as I talk a lot about Picard, what I find is that I'm talking about myself.
Patrick Stewart,
English
Actor
#Talk
#Talking
One day, out of irritation, I said, you know all of those years with the Royal Shakespeare Company, all those years of playing kings and princes and speaking black verse, and bestriding the landscape of England was nothing but a preparation for sitting in the captain's chair of the Enterprise.
Patrick Stewart,
English
Actor
#Nothing
#Years
#Day
#England
#Preparation
#Kings
#Shakespeare
#Company
I had come to the point when I realized it was unlikely that my film career was going to move beyond a certain level of role. And I was - because I had graphic instances of it - handicapped by the success of Star Trek. A director would say, 'I don't want Jean-Luc Picard in my movie' - and this was compounded by X-Men as well.
Patrick Stewart,
English
Actor
#Want
#Film
#Success
#Career
Tom Hanks knows the name of all the episodes.
Patrick Stewart,
English
Actor
#Name
I don't do impersonations. I can do a wounded elephant! I can do a really good cow! And because of the amount of time I spent in North Yorkshire, I do a variety of sheep. All of which I will be happy to roll out for you!
Patrick Stewart,
English
Actor
#Time
#Will
#Sheep
#Variety
Last Wednesday, I stupidly dropped my iPhone in the bath, and my life has sort of spiraled almost out of control.
Patrick Stewart,
English
Actor
#Life
#Control
I never had teenage years. I guess because I was seen to be more adult than anybody around me.
Patrick Stewart,
English
Actor
#Years
#Teenage
I think I came back from America a funnier and nicer person than I went.
Patrick Stewart,
English
Actor
#America
I was brought up in a very poor and very violent household. I spent much of my childhood being afraid.
Patrick Stewart,
English
Actor
#Being
#Poor
#Childhood
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.
Patrick Stewart,
English
Actor
#Time
#Right
#Hollywood
#Being
#Television
#Luck
#Measure
I would like to see us get this place right first before we have the arrogance to put significantly flawed civilizations out onto other planets, even though they may be utterly uninhabited.
Patrick Stewart,
English
Actor
#Right
#May
#First
#Arrogance
I wouldn't know a space-time continuum or warp core breach if they got into bed with me.
Patrick Stewart,
English
Actor
#Space
#Bed
I've met actors where you think, if only you could just clean up your act and get it together, people would want to work with you. Some people are so difficult, it's just not worth working with them.
Patrick Stewart,
English
Actor
#Want
#People
#Work
#Act
#Worth
#Actors
I've met actors where you think, if only you could just clean up your act and get it together, people would want to work with you. Some people are so difficult, it's not worth working with them!
Patrick Stewart,
English
Actor
#Want
#People
#Work
#Act
#Worth
#Actors
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.
Patrick Stewart,
English
Actor
#Past
#Thought
#Force
It is what you do from now on that will either move our civilization forward a few tiny steps, or else... begin to march us steadily backward.
Patrick Stewart,
English
Actor
#Now
#Will
#Civilization
#March