- Q: You seem to find this all very amusing.
- Commander William T. Riker: I might - if we weren't on our way to help some suffering and dying humans, who...
- Q: [dismissively] Ah, your species is always suffering and dying.
- [Q appears in a Napoleonic uniform]
- Captain Jean-Luc Picard: A Marshal of France? Ridiculous!
- Q: Well, one takes the jobs he can get.
- Q: Hear this, Picard, and reflect: "All the galaxy is a stage."
- Captain Jean-Luc Picard: World, not galaxy. "All the world's a stage."
- Q: Oh, you know that one. Well, if he were living now, he would have said galaxy. How about this, uh... "Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
- Captain Jean-Luc Picard: I see. So how we respond to a game tells you more about us than our real life, this... tale, told by an idiot? Interesting, Q.
- Commander William T. Riker: I feel like such an idiot.
- Captain Jean-Luc Picard: Quite right. So you should.
- Lt. Commander Data: Sir, how is it that the Q can... handle time and space so well, and us so badly?
- Captain Jean-Luc Picard: Perhaps someday we will discover that space and time are simpler than the human equation.
- Captain Jean-Luc Picard: Don't you see, Riker? He's nothing but a flim-flam man. He's been that ever since we met him at Farpoint!
- Lieutenant Worf: "Flim-flam"?
- Q: Perhaps maybe a little, uh, Hamlet?
- Captain Jean-Luc Picard: Oh, I know Hamlet. And what he might say with irony, I say with conviction: "What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form, in moving, how express and admirable! In action, how like an angel! In apprehension, how like a god!"
- Q: Surely, you don't see your species like that, do you?
- Captain Jean-Luc Picard: I see us one day becoming that, Q. Is it that which concerns you?
- Captain Jean-Luc Picard: Perhaps they're all remembering that old saying "Power corrupts".
- Commander William T. Riker: And absolute power corrupts absolutely. Do you believe I haven't thought of that, Jean-Luc?
- Captain Jean-Luc Picard: And have you noticed how you and I are now on a first name basis?
- [Riker is demonstrating the abilities bestowed upon him by Q]
- Commander William T. Riker: [to Geordi] And you, my friend, I know what you want.
- [with a wave of his hand, Riker restores Geordi's eyesight]
- Lieutenant Geordi La Forge: [seeing Tasha for the first time] You're as beautiful as I imagined. And more.
- Commander William T. Riker: Then we can throw away the VISOR?
- Lieutenant Geordi La Forge: I don't think so, sir.
- [Geordi glances at Q]
- Lieutenant Geordi La Forge: The price is a little too high for me. And I don't like who I'd have to thank.
- [Geordi takes his VISOR back and sits down]
- Lieutenant Geordi La Forge: Make me the way I was.
- [pleadingly]
- Lieutenant Geordi La Forge: Please!
- [Worf has been "given" a Klingon woman, who is snarling at him]
- Lieutenant Geordi La Forge: Worf, is this your idea of sex?
- Lieutenant Worf: This *is* sex. But I have no place for it in my life now!
- [Riker has proposed to fulfill his friends' deepest desires]
- Commander William T. Riker: Data...
- Lt. Commander Data: No! No, sir.
- Commander William T. Riker: But it's what you've always wanted, Data - to become human.
- Lt. Commander Data: Yes, sir, that is true. But I never wanted to compound one... illusion with another. It might be real to Q. Perhaps even you, sir. But it would never be so to me. Was it not one of the Captain's favorite authors who wrote "This above all, to thine own self be true"? Sorry, Commander. I must decline.
- [Q appears in a monk's costume]
- Q: Let us pray, for understanding and for compassion.
- Captain Jean-Luc Picard: Let us do no such damn thing! What is this need of yours for costumes, Q? Have you no identity of your own?
- Q: I come in search of the truth.
- Captain Jean-Luc Picard: You come in search of what humanity is!
- Q: I *forgive* your blasphemy!
- Commander William T. Riker: We don't have time for these games.
- Q: Games? Did someone say "game"? And perchance for interest's sake, a deadly game? To the game!
- Q: Shall it be a test of strength? Meaningless, since you have none. A test of intelligence, then? Equally as meaningless!
- [Picard is alone on the bridge, when Yar appears at her station]
- Captain Jean-Luc Picard: Where is everyone else?
- Lieutenant Tasha Yar: Down on some planet.
- Captain Jean-Luc Picard: Some planet? What're *you* doing here?
- Lieutenant Tasha Yar: Well, I, er... uh... It sounds strange; but I'm in a penalty box.
- Captain Jean-Luc Picard: Whatever it is, why do you demonstrate it through this confrontation? Why not a simple, direct explanation, a statement of what you seek? Why these games?
- Q: Why these games? Why, the play is the thing. And I'm surprised you have to ask when your human, Shakespeare, explained it all so well.
- Commander William T. Riker: Geordi, can you see Worf?
- Lieutenant Geordi La Forge: I'd see the freckles on his nose if he had them, sir.
- Q: "Drink not with thine enemy." The rigid Klingon code. Explains something of why you defeated them.
- [Q has offered Riker to become part of the Q]
- Commander William T. Riker: To become a part of you? I don't even like you.
- Q: You're gonna miss me!
- Q: [reciting a log entry of his own] The Enterprise is now helpless, stuck like an Earth insect in amber while its bridge crew plays out a game whose real intent is to test if their first officer is worthy of the greatest gift the Q can offer.
- [Worf moves in on Q]
- Captain Jean-Luc Picard: No, Lieutenant Worf! You'll make no move against him unless I order it.
- Q: Pity! You might have learned an interesting lesson, Macrohead - with a microbrain!
- Lieutenant Worf: Grrr...
- Q: You see, of all species, you cannot abide stagnation. Change is at the heart of what you are. But change into what? That's the question.