Kate Mulgrew Quotes

There is no nobility in hanging into something that is miserable and false.

Over the course of my career, which is about 40 years, I've visited plenty of prisons and I know what they're like.

Homesickness is a sickness of the heart, not of the mind. It is deeply subjective and belongs, inarguably, to the sufferer alone.

The one thing that has set us apart had been taken from us, and thought we would joke again, and tease, and strive to recover a flavor of the old exuberance, we would never again laugh as we once had.

I developed a constitution that could only ever be described as able and hardy.

I think people think I'm accessible. I'm never treated as a star, either by fans or other actors, and I like it like that. I don't get the star treatment. I think that means I'm a good actor. They acknowledge me as a human being, and to me, that's invalua.

Many words made no sense to me; it was a particular kind of language, highly stylized, while at the same time much of the dialogue between officers seemed informal, even casual. What was at once evident was Captain Janeway's love of science, her unusual friendship with the Vulcan Tuvok, her need for adventure, and her mettle. In the pilot script, her name was Elizabeth Janeway, and although I knew I had my work cut out for me, I felt an instant and natural affinity with this woman. I liked her style.

The first female captain in the history of the Star Trek franchise,

Of course, the young male demographic has always been the target demographic for 'Star Trek,' the men ageing fifteen to about twenty-five or thirty, a very tough market to appeal to.

Life's so brief," she goes on. "We're, at every juncture, staring mortality in the face. It's the very least we can do if we think it will be of any interest or value, to share the past. And although mine's been crooked, it's also been splendid. It's taught me to be vulnerable and humble, to write this book.

You need to call on your best and strongest self.

She [my mother] tapped my hand lightly with her fingers and, looking out the window, said, "You know, I've missed having a mother. It's a gaping hole. I think having a mother is one of the great things in life--one of the only things that can save you. I'm always looking for my mother and, frankly, Kitten, it's becoming exhausting, so I thought I'd ask you if you would be my mother. You just have that way about you. You're not really what anyone would call a typical daughter, but I think you have exactly what it takes to be a mother. Don't you think it's a good idea?

It's hard to know what's in a person's heart when she never says good-bye.

After a particularly disheartening day in my freshman year of high school, in which my arrogance had once again stirred up the insecurity of my classmates and driven them to acts of ill-concealed hostility,

I think the chemistry on the Orange set is extraordinary and I'm going to risk and say this: I think by virtue of the fact that there are not so many men, we are free to be absolutely authentic. There is a lot of freedom and trust.

It's called Star Trek: Voyager. You would be playing the captain of a starship.

Picasso wasn't in conflict, you can bet your bottom dollar on that. He said, Scram! I need to work, and his mistresses and their spawn ran for the hills. Dickens wasn't in conflict. He had ten children and wrote as many novels in almost as many years, because it was both understood and appreciated that he was gifted, famous, and rich. The male artist has always been respected.

It was curious to me then, as now, the power of the performer over an audience when, in fact, the gift itself springs from the writer's pen.

I think you're wrong there. It feels selfish at the time, because the pain is excruciating, but there is no nobility in hanging on to something that is miserable and false. We have to fight for our happiness in life.

This is not the 19th century, where actors are expected to play completely opposite roles. We're not typecast, but we're brought in because somebody thinks that it's a good fit, so you make it a better fit.

I have a very rich and wonderful personal life, and at its core are my sons.

We are talking about someone who has lived. It must be honored in every respect. The fictional can take any kind of channel - according to the actor's marriage to the character.

Blank, vacant, empty eyes looked not at me but past me, and I knew my mother was lost in a memory I could never understand, nor ever be allowed to share. Some ancient sadness behind her eyes made me feel utterly helpless and alone. She wasn't my mother in that moment; she was someone else entirely, a stranger to whom my existence mattered not at all. My

I press my face to the window, and I think to myself, There will never be another day like this day. This day will end. Everything passes in front of me with alarming speed, and though I recognize the splendour of the trees and the radiance of the sun, I am detached. This startles and unsettles me.

I've done a lot of television in life, and I don't remember the last time that I felt so consistently happy [working with Jenji Kohan].

I laughed, disarmed. "Shopping isn't really my thing. Not when there are bookstores to be plundered and tombs to be explored.

The first to greet me was Robbie McNeill, who jumped up from his post at the helm and said, "Welcome aboard, Captain! I cannot tell you how happy I am to meet you!" His handsome Celtic face shone with mischief, and I felt the first gladdening of a spontaneous friendship.

It's the digital era. What makes it exciting is that it's both the Golden Age of television and the Wild West of television. Something is happening now that's unprecedented, and we know that we're a part of it. What could be more exciting or better than that? You can't lose because you're on the pony and you're staking the claim.

It is a wonderful thing to know and understand friendship. It is a gift, without question. I have been blessed with a handful of the most extraordinary friends, whose allegiance and devotion have, again and again in my life, lifted me up. Now, in this stiff room full of important people, I showed them Janeway's capacity for friendship. I laughed with Tuvok, I teased him, and then suddenly turned and found myself utterly vulnerable in his presence, seeking his counsel, needing his guidance. In the end, I embraced him, and put my hand to his cheek.

Janeway enters from her office, which on the USS Voyager was called the captain's ready room, and walks slowly through the bridge, greeting each officer in turn.

It is such a gloriously beautiful May morning, I put my hand to the window and hold it against the glass; I want to see what my hand looks like before it becomes another kind of hand. I press my face to the window, and I think to myself, There will never be another day like this day. This day will end.

I often wondered if the pursuit of the illicit was not tacitly encouraged among those in charge, devoted, as they all were, to profit. I could have been carrying on with a psychopathic serial murderer, and no one would have blinked an eye as long as I knew my lines and hit my mark with efficiency and a modicum of verve.

It had taken thirty years for me to understand that regrets do not dissipate, they do not abate into sadness - they harden until they have formed into a small fist that often rests quietly in the pit of your stomach but that can suddenly, and without warning, land a punch so powerful you are left doubled over in pain, gasping for breath.

I don't know Kitten," she said, zipping up her money belt, "but I'll tell you one thing--if it were a book, I wouldn't be able to put it down.

Great writing is great writing. It's as simple as all that.

Ours was a bond without resilience. We had not fought for a friendship, we had not suffered because of the lack of one. We had taken wildly divergent paths and, in so doing, we had lost each other.

How is it that words so longed for can hit and miss with equal acuity?

As very often happens when we are consumed with the busyness of life, a condition exacerbated by the occasion of death, we are shaken when, at last, we find ourselves useless.

With our father dead and our mother lost, we surviving siblings became unmoored. Unusual behaviors revealed themselves at inauspicious times. Simmering beneath the surface of our loneliness was a kind of inarticulable fury, reducing each of us to a meanness we despised. We longed to reach out to one another, but at every turn this instinct was thwarted, tangled in a web of suspicion and resentment. As much as we had loved one another in the fullness of life, we hated what we had become when that wholeness was eclipsed by loss. Mendacity, jealousy, and rage percolated on the back burner while egoism masqueraded as generosity. In our confusion, we second-guessed one another, and because we never learned to confront each other with frank vulnerability, we fell back into the roles assigned to us at birth.

The work did not let me down, and neither did the part. When Mulgrew suffered, Janeway picked her up. And when Janeway felt like giving up, Mulgrew slapped her into shape. I was put to good use in every way, and this saved me.

Whatever ill we bore one another, it was always within the accepted confines of sibling rivalry, but in the absence of parents to inspire that rivalry we lost confidence in ourselves, and in our love for one another. We fought for life to continue as it had always been, we fought for our right to be in the house that we loved, we fought for stature, for respect, for equality.