Q and Guinan in “Unfinished Business”

Q

You? You summoned me?

You must be Q. Took your damn time.

Q

You are that multi-celled, sanctimonious, droning shrew known as Guinan. Right... It's the 21st century. Our paths have yet to cross.

I thought the Summoning didn't work.

Q

"Summoning"? The Summoning is a sacred ritual. Not a chat, by which you bipeds exchange the nauseating minutia of your pathetic lives!

When the Ritual stalled, I sensed something. Emptiness and fear. I thought it was me, but it wasn't! I feel it on you! [Q steps back, and Guinan realises] You're dying!

Q

Another quality I sincerely loathe about your species: empathy.

I knew you could kill each other, but otherwise, aren't you-?

Q

Immortal? So I believed. But now, for the first time as I look across the temporal horizon, the darkness... You think I'm dying! I prefer to believe that I am on the threshold of the unknowable. When I first felt it, I thought to myself: this is good! This is new! Infinite life, after all, has its drawbacks. And so, I prepared myself to be enveloped in the warm glow of meaning. Oh, that... moment has yet to come. Not even a glimmer. Dying stars burn brighter as they spin towards extinction. I, on the other hand, seem to be simply disappearing... into nothing. Why do you think it took me so long to get here?

That's why you walked in here today? Why you're using humans as your game pieces?

Q

[snaps his fingers, nothing happens] You see that? I'm honestly trying to vaporise you at this moment.

This 'thing' you're doing to Picard... it's how you're hoping to find... meaning in your life?

Q

I now have a lifetime. Can a single act redeem a lifetime?

Why bring him to the past?

Q

I did not bring him to the past. He did that on his own. There are many forms of time travel.

But he's trapped here!

Q

[angrily] The trap is immaterial! It's the escape that counts! [Q and Guinan stare at each other] I'll see you when I see you. Unfortunately. [Q goes to leave.] Humans... they're all trapped in the past.