Quotes by Rod Serling

Somewhere between apathy and anarchy lies the thinking human being.

If you have the temerity to try to dramatize a theme that involves any particular social controversy currently extant... then you're in deep trouble.

If survival calls for the bearing of arms, bear them you must. But the most important part of the challenge is for you to find another means that does not come with the killing of your fellow man.

He's not a piece of meat you can job off the market by the pound. because, if you do,maish, if you do, you'll rot in hell.

When I dig back through memory cells, I get one particularly distinctive feeling-and that's one of warmth, comfort and well-being. For whatever else I may have had, or lost, or will find-I've still got a hometown. This, nobody's gonna take away from me.

Why do I write? I guess that's been asked of every writer. I don't know. It isn't any massive compulsion.

Now death is with us in such abundance and hovers over us in so massive a form that we don't have time to invent a mythology, nor is our creativity directed toward same. Now it's to prevent death.

The writer's role is to menace the public's conscience. He must have a position, a point of view. He must see the arts as a vehicle of social criticism and he must focus on the issues of his time.

Just drawing back and drawing in; becoming narcissistic.

I ask for your indulgence when I march out quotations. This is the double syndrome of men who write for a living and men who are over forty. The young smoke pot -- we inhale from our 'Bartlett's.'

I find it very difficult to live through the censorship of profanity on television.

In terms of screenwriting adaptations it's trying to cut out stuff that's extraneous, without doing damage to the original piece, because you owe a debt of some respect to the original author. That's why it was bought.

Infinitely more taboos, on television.

I don't have close relationships with agents. They're friends, but they're not confidants.

I write much better in the nonconfines of the early morning than I do the clutter of the day.

It has forever been thus: So long as men write what they think, then all of the other freedoms -- all of them -- may remain intact. And it is then that writing becomes a weapon of truth, an article of faith, an act of courage.

I find dictating in the mass media particularly good because you're writing for voice anyway; you're writing for people to say a line and, consequently, saying a line through a machine is quite a valid test for the validity of what you're saying.

You can be a hunchback and a dwarf and what-all. If you write beautifully, you can write beautifully.

Somehow, some way, incredibly enough, good writing ultimately gets recognized. If you're a really good writer and deserve that honored position, then by God, you'll write, and you'll be read.

I think I'd rather win, for example, a Writer's Guild award than almost anything on earth. And the few nominations I've had with the guild, and the few awards I've had, represented to me a far more legitimate concrete achievement than anything.

If the producer doesn't like you, consequently he reads the script with a very negative view. But I wouldn't preoccupy myself with that, I don't give a damn. You can be a hunchback and a dwarf and whatall.

I'm sufficiently independent to know that I can live well and comfortably all the rest of my life whether I'm rejected or not.

A place ... a time ... where a man can live his life full measure.

Bias and prejudice make me angry...more than anything.

I choose to think of tv audience as nameless, formless, faceless people who are all like me. And anything that I write, if I like it, they'll like it.

I'm afraid that if I started to ponder who I am and what I am, I might not like what I find.

Hollywood's a great place to live... if you're a grapefruit.

I'm an affluent screenwriter and all that -- I'm a known screenwriter, but I'm not in the fraternity of the very, very major people. I would say a guy like Ernie Lehman, William Goldman, and a few others are quite a cut above.

Not since the British raided Cologne had so many bombs landed in such a small space in such a short time.

Every man is put on earth condemned to die. Time and method of execution unknown.

All the Dachaus must remain standing.

(on being born on Christmas Day, 1924) I was a Christmas present that was delivered unwrapped.

If you need drugs to be a good writer, you are not a good writer.

Being like everybody is the same as being nobody.

In almost everything I've written there is a thread of this: man's seemingly palpable need to dislike someone other than himself.

You see. No shock. No engulfment. No tearing assunder. What you feared would come like an explosion is like a whisper. What you thought was the end is the beginning.

Any state, any entity, any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of Man, that state is obsolete.

We're developing a new citizenry. One that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won't be able to think.

But it makes you wonder, doesn't it? Just how normal are we? Just who are the people we nod our hellos to as we pass on the street? A rather good question to ask -- particularly in The Twilight Zone.

For civilization to survive, the human race has to remain civilized.

I remember the first sale I made was a hundred and fifty dollars for a radio script, and, as poor as I was, I didn't cash the check for three months. I kept showing it to people.

The writer's no different. When he's rejected, that paper is rejected, in a sense, a sizeable fragment of the writer is rejected as well. It's a piece of himself that's being turned down.

I think I would like to be in Victorian times. Small town. Bandstands. Summer. That kind of thing. Without disease.

Coming up with ideas is the easiest thing on earth. Putting them down is the hardest.

Over the long haul I'd say that most directors I've worked with have been pretty sensitive to the quality of the interpreted scenes.

I don't enjoy any of the process of writing. I enjoy it when it goes on if it zings and it has great warmth and import and it's successful.

I miss the comraderie of live television -- the fact that you were on the set, you worked closely with the director and the cast, that I miss. But, no, I'm happy, I'm happy doing film.

I found that it was all right to have Martians saying things Democrats and Republicans could never say.

I couldn't direct because I'm too impatient and I couldn't put together a package because I don't understand money. I'd rather just do what I'm doing.

The ultimate obscenity is not caring, not doing something about what you feel, not feeling! Just drawing back and drawing in, becoming narcissistic.

The ultimate obscenity is not caring, not doing something about what you feel, not feeling! Just drawing back and drawing in; becoming narcissistic.

Most shows, buying shows, have a standard fee for the first shot of the writer and if you have a very militant agent, I suppose he might jack it up four percent or something. But in essence, you sell for what is the going rate.

I don't think it's man's function to write. I don't think it's a normal thing like teeth-brushing and going to the bathroom. It's a supered position on the animal.

Justice can span years. Retribution is not subject to a calendar.

I guess Requiem for a Heavyweight as old as it is was as honest a piece as I've ever done.

I would guess that Ray Bradbury would be equally resentful of what they did with Illustrated Man, which, you know, took a central idea thesis of his and pissed all over it -- made it into one of the worst movies ever made.

According to the Bible, God created the heavens and the Earth. It is man's prerogative -- and woman's -- to create their own particular and private hell.

You can become much more independent, much more courageous with a bank account. And also, much more independent and self-reliant when you know you have money behind you.

The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices ... And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to the Twilight Zone.

Someplace between apathy and anarchy is the stance of the thinking human being; he does embrace a cause, he does take a position, and can't allow it to become business as usual. Humanity is our business.

Writers, like most human beings, are adaptable creatures. They can learn to accept subordination without growing fond of it. No writer can forever stand in the wings and watch other people take the curtain calls while his own contributions get lost in the shuffle.

The major difference frequently is in time. The motion picture, for example, gives you considerably more freedom of expression than does the confined thirty-minute television show. But in essence, they're not that dissimilar.

Up there, up there in the vastness of space, in the void that is sky, up there is an enemy known as isolation. It sits there in the stars waiting, waiting with the patience of eons, forever waiting in the Twilight Zone.

I just want people to remember me a hundred years from now. I don't care that they're not able to quote any single line that I've written. But just that they can say, Oh, he was a writer. That's sufficiently an honored position for me.

How can you put on a meaningful drama when every fifteen minutes proceedings are interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits with toilet paper?

You unlock the door with the key of imagination.

As long as they talk about you, you're not really dead, as long as they speak your name, you continue. A legend doesn't die, just because the man dies.

You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind; a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's the signpost up ahead--your next stop, the Twilight Zone.

If in any quest for magic, in any search for sorcery, witchery, legerdemain, first check the human spirit.