Citas

[on William Shatner]: He's just a wonderful actor who created a singular character. No one could have done Kirk the way Bill did. His energy and his determination, that's Bill. And that's also Captain Kirk.

(2005) The world has changed from when I was a young teen feeling ashamed for being gay. The issue of gay marriage is now a political issue. That would have been unthinkable when I was young.

[during a 2006 interview with Scott Simon on National Public Radio] I went to school in a black tar-paper barrack [as a child in internment camps] and began the day seeing the barbed-wire fence, and thank god those barbed-wire fences are now long gone for Japanese Americans. But I still see an invisible, legalistic barbed-wire that keeps me, my partner of 19 years, Brad Altman, and another group of Americans separated from a normal life. That's what I've been advocating on the Human Rights Campaign Equality Tour--I call it the "Equality Trek".

[on the Occupy Wall Street movement] The struggle is not only social, economic and political - it is *structural*. No matter what side you are on, it is worth listening to what they have to say.

John D.F. Black who wrote The Naked Time (1966) came to me and said he was thinking of having Sulu use a Samurai sword. I told him, "It certainly is ethnically appropriate because I am of Japanese ancestry but what about a rapier? I was born in this country and when I was a kid I didn't play Samurai. I played Robin Hood." He asked me if I know how to fence to which I replied, "Of course." That night I grabbed the phonebook and was furiously trying to find fencing schools so I could learn at least the basics.

I've run the marathon several times, so I definitely don't look like the Great Ancestor!

My memories of camp - I was four years old to eight years old - they're fond memories.

Viaje a las estrellas (1966) is a show that had a vision about a future that was positive.

Plays close, movies wrap and television series eventually get cancelled, and we were cancelled in three seasons.

Yes, I remember the barbed wire and the guard towers and the machine guns, but they became part of my normal landscape. What would be abnormal in normal times became my normality in camp.

To do theater, you need to block off a hunk of time.

And it seems to me important for a country, for a nation to certainly know about its glorious achievements but also to know where its ideals failed, in order to keep that from happening again.

As you know, when Viaje a las estrellas (1966) was canceled after the second season, it was the activism of the fans that revived it for a third season.

But when we came out of camp, that's when I first realized that being in camp, that being Japanese-American, was something shameful.

Every time we had a hot war going on in Asia, it was difficult for Asian Americans here.

I marched back then - I was in a civil-rights musical, "Fly Blackbird", and we met Martin Luther King.

I spent my boyhood behind the barbed wire fences of American internment camps and that part of my life is something that I wanted to share with more people.

I thought this convention phenomenon [Star Trek] was very flattering, but that's about the extent of it.

I'm a civic busybody and I've been blessed with an active career.

Then that did very well at the box office, so before you knew it, we were in a string of feature motion pictures. Then they announced that they were going to do some spin-offs of us.

This is supposed to be a participatory democracy and if we're not in there participating then the people that will manipulate and exploit the system will step in there.

Well, it gives, certainly to my father, who is the one that suffered the most in our family, an understanding of how the ideals of a country are only as good as the people who give it flesh and blood.

Well, the whole history of Viaje a las estrellas (1966) is the market demand.

You know, I grew up in two American internment camps, and at that time, I was very young.

I'm an Anglophile. I visit England regularly, sometimes three or four times a year, at least once a year.

[on the dark elements inhabiting the Internet] They're meddlesome, bothersome and irritating. But that's part of the society - the human animal. Yes, there are people who want to criticize just for the purpose of being mean, and they have problems. But if you start responding to them, it becomes raw meat to them. I find ignoring them is the best tactic. But sometimes, I learn something from the thoughtful, legitimate critiques and negative comments. You have to keep an open mind and a discriminating mind: to know what to read and be impressed by, and what to ignore.

[on Leonard Nimoy] The word extraordinary is often overused, but I think it's really appropriate for Leonard. He was an extraordinarily talented man, but he was also a very decent human being. His talent embraced directing as well as acting and photography. He was a very sensitive man. And we feel his passing very much. He had been ill for a long, long time, and we miss him very much.

[on Héroes fuera de órbita (1999)] I think it's a chillingly realistic documentary. [laughs] The details in it, I recognized every one of them. It is a powerful piece of documentary filmmaking. And I do believe that when we get kidnapped by aliens, it's going to be genuine, true Star Trek fans who will save the day. I was rolling in the aisles. And Tim Allen had that Shatner-esque swagger down pat. And I roared when the shirt came off, and Sigourney [Weaver] roll her eyes and says, "There goes that shirt again." How often did we hear that on the set? [laughs]

My father wanted me to be an architect. I was an architecture student at UC Berkeley. I lasted two years, but my real passion was acting. My father said: "Look at television, look at the movies, look at Broadway. Those roles for Asians are terrible; all the stereotypes. Is that what you want to be?" I took that as a challenge to prove him wrong.

Arnold Schwarzenegger made me come out of the closet. Two years after Massachusetts passed a marriage-equality bill, California passed the bill, too, but it needed the signature of the governor, Schwarzenegger. But despite saying, 'I'm from Hollywood; some of my friends are gays and lesbians,' when he campaigned, he veto'd the vote. I decided to talk to the press as a gay man for the first time because of him.

You never ask an actor whether he can do anything, because we are expert at everything, and if we aren't, that night, we'll go out and become one.

[on working with John Wayne]: He was not an actor. He was a compelling gigantic personality. He was the same guy off-screen. He walked in front of the screen and he was able to maintain that. Most people change when they go in front of the camera but he was always John Wayne off camera and on.