The biggest reward for a thing well done is to have done it.
If I were to imagine myself as an idler wheel inside some big mix of gears, then I would be connected to everything. It's not like there's just me and then nothing.
I really don't think anything I do is a mistake. It could be if I didn't learn from it.
I'm such an incredibly, stupidly sensitive person that everything that happens to me, I experience it really intensely. I feel everything very deeply. And when you feel things deeply and you think about things a lot and you think about how you feel, you learn a lot about yourself. And when you know yourself, you know life.
It pisses me off to think we're conditioned to push away bad feelings and think anything that's uncomfortable is to be avoided. When things are really bad nowadays, I recognize the value in it because it's me filling my quota- it's going to make my joy more intense later.
At my lowest moments, I think of people who come to shows. I still get very sad and sometimes I feel like I have no friends, but when that happens now, I'll think of people whose names or faces I don't know - they're my friends and they love me. I've got them. It really does save me. I still feel awkward, but that's the one thing I can grab onto at my lowest points.
Nothing that you do will ever feel good if you let people convince you that you have no choice.
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.
The modern mind is in complete disarray. Knowledge has stretched itself to the point where neither the world nor our intelligence can find any foot-hold. It is a fact that we are suffering from nihilism.
I wish that we might get back to worship again. Then when people come into the church they will instantly sense that they have come among holy people, God's people. They can testify, 'Of a truth God is in this place'
You have to be true to yourself, but you have to be true to your best self, not to the self that secretly thinks you are better than other people.