Comedy today is not what it was years ago. It's always changing, in particular to female comics. No longer are certain subjects considered to be a male preserve. Women can talk about sexuality and their bodily functions and it can be very, very entertaining. It's changed the impact of comedy acting.

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.

Tom Hanks knows the name of all the episodes.

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.

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.

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

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.