Rod Serling Quotes

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I'm a Western-cultured man who subscribes to the ancient saw that men do not cry, I don't cry either. I'll go to a movie, for example, and not infrequently something triggers the urge to weep, but I don't allow myself.
Rod Serling Quotes: I'm a Western-cultured man who
I find it very difficult to live through the censorship of profanity on television.
Rod Serling Quotes: I find it very difficult
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.
Rod Serling Quotes: As long as they talk
In his grave, we praise him for his decency - but when he walked amongst us, we responded with no decency of our own.
When he suggested that all men should have a place in the sun - we put a special sanctity on the right of ownership and the privilege of prejudice by maintaining that to deny homes to Negroes was a democratic right.
Now we acknowledge his compassion - but we exercised no compassion of our own. When he asked us to understand that men take to the streets out of anguish and hopelessness and a vision of that dream dying, we bought guns and speculated about roving agitators and subversive conspiracies and demanded law and order.
We felt anger at the effects, but did little to acknowledge the causes. We extol all the virtues of the man - but we chose not to call them virtues before his death.
And now, belatedly, we talk of this man's worth - but the judgement comes late in the day as part of a eulogy when it should have been made a matter of record while he existed as a living force. If we are to lend credence to our mourning, there are acknowledgements that must be made now, albeit belatedly. We must act on the altogether proper assumption that Martin Luther King asked for nothing but that which was his due... He asked only for equality, and it is that which we denied him.
[excerpt from a letter to The Los Angeles Times in response to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.; April 8, 1968
Rod Serling Quotes: In his grave, we praise
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.
Rod Serling Quotes: When I dig back through
You see, we can feed the stomach with concentrates, we can supply microfilm for reading, recreation, even movies of a sort, we can pump oxygen in, and waste material out, but there's one thing we can't simulate. That's a very basic need. Man's hunger for companionship. The barrier of loneliness, that's one thing we haven't licked yet.
Rod Serling Quotes: You see, we can feed
It's part of the business of really not caring about topping myself because I really don't care what's going to happen. I think just surviving is a major thing. I'd like to write something that my peers, my colleagues, my fellow writers would find a source of respect.
Rod Serling Quotes: It's part of the business
I guess Requiem for a Heavyweight as old as it is was as honest a piece as I've ever done.
Rod Serling Quotes: I guess Requiem for a
Every Superstate has one iron rule: logic is an enemy and the truth is a menace.
Rod Serling Quotes: Every Superstate has one iron
There are millions of ways to not be writing. You say you're not in the mood, you'll pick it up tomorrow.
Rod Serling Quotes: There are millions of ways
I'm frequently surprised, sometimes bugged off, and sometimes happy, depending on the actor. It's a fact of life that just as often as not an actor can breathe life into a line as he can destroy it by misinterpretation, and I've been blessed frequently by having good actors.
Rod Serling Quotes: I'm frequently surprised, sometimes bugged
For the record, suspicion can kill, and prejudice can destroy. And a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own, for the children and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to the Twilight Zone.
Rod Serling Quotes: For the record, suspicion can
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.
Rod Serling Quotes: If you have the temerity
If it sounds good as you say it, likely as not it'll sound good when an actor's saying it.
Rod Serling Quotes: If it sounds good as
A small footnote found in the court records of some parallel world. The name of Mitchell Chaplin, who served his sentence of invisibility and learned his lesson well. Too well. This time, however, he will wear his invisibility like a shield of glory. A shield forged in the very heart ... of the Twilight Zone.
Rod Serling Quotes: A small footnote found in
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.
Rod Serling Quotes: The writer's role is to
I would guess that the price of the script really is secondary. The credit is much more the essence.
Rod Serling Quotes: I would guess that the
Coming up with ideas is the easiest thing on earth. Putting them down is the hardest.
Rod Serling Quotes: Coming up with ideas is
I've never really topped myself, because awards in themselves really don't reflect major accomplishment. It's kind of a strange, backslapping ritual that we go through in this town where you get awards for almost everything. For surviving the day you're going to get awards.
Rod Serling Quotes: I've never really topped myself,
All the Dachaus must remain standing. The Dachaus, the Belsens, the Buchenwalds, the Auschwitzes -all of them. They must remain standing because they are a monument to a moment in time when some men decided to turn the earth into a graveyard, into it they shoveled all of their reason, their logic, their knowledge, but worst of all their conscience. And the moment we forget this, the moment we cease to be haunted by its rememberance. Then we become the grave diggers.
Rod Serling Quotes: All the Dachaus must remain
The ultimate obscenity is not caring, not doing something about what you feel, not feeling! Just drawing back and drawing in, becoming narcissistic.
Rod Serling Quotes: The ultimate obscenity is not
I have compromised down the line. I've disliked it intensely in the old days when you were trying to talk race relations and they would not allow you to talk about the legitimacies of race relations. In the old days, you didn't talk about black, you talked about Eskimo or American Indian, and the American Indian was assumed not to be a problem area.
Rod Serling Quotes: I have compromised down the
People are put down in television now, not because they're not qualitative, not because they're not talented - but because there's no room for them, and worse than that, there's nowhere they can find exposure. Their own good talent may die of mourning, just for want of having somebody read what they've written. I don't presume to say how we can best provide platforms for new writers to get read. I don't know. But therein lies the major problem.
Rod Serling Quotes: People are put down in
The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices - to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own - for the children and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to The Twilight Zone.
[closing narration: "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street", Twilight Zone episode aired March 4, 1960
Rod Serling Quotes: The tools of conquest do
Whenever you write, whatever you write, never make the mistake of assuming the audience is any less intelligent than you are.
Rod Serling Quotes: Whenever you write, whatever you
I think I would like to be in Victorian times. Small town. Bandstands. Summer. That kind of thing. Without disease.
Rod Serling Quotes: I think I would like
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.
Rod Serling Quotes: I would guess that Ray
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.
Rod Serling Quotes: If survival calls for the
Bias and prejudice make me angry ... more than anything.
Rod Serling Quotes: Bias and prejudice make me
Beasley was a little man whose face looked like an X ray of an ulcer.
Rod Serling Quotes: Beasley was a little man
If you need drugs to be a good writer, you are not a good writer.
Rod Serling Quotes: If you need drugs to
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.
Rod Serling Quotes: He's not a piece of
Every man is put on earth condemned to die. Time and method of execution unknown.
Rod Serling Quotes: Every man is put on
I was a Christmas present that was delivered unwrapped.
Rod Serling Quotes: I was a Christmas present
Trying to be the best at anything carries its own special risks, in or out of the Twilight Zone.
Rod Serling Quotes: Trying to be the best
I don't know what my friends do. Generally they become producers. That way they can stop writing!
Rod Serling Quotes: I don't know what my
Martin Sloan, age thirty-six, vice-president in charge of media. Successful in most things but not in the one effort that all men try at some time in their lives - trying to go home again. And also like all men perhaps there'll be an occasion, maybe a summer night sometime, when he'll look up from what he's doing and listen to the distant music of a calliope, and hear the voices and the laughter of the people and the places of his past. And perhaps across his mind there'll flit a little errant wish, that a man might not have to become old, never outgrow the parks and the merry-go-rounds of his youth. And he'll smile then too because he'll know it is just an errant wish, some wisp of memory not too important really, some laughing ghosts that cross a man's mind, that are a part of the Twilight Zone.
Rod Serling Quotes: Martin Sloan, age thirty-six, vice-president
Somewhere between apathy and anarchy lies the thinking human being.
Rod Serling Quotes: Somewhere between apathy and anarchy
When I first went into freelancing, I think there was a period of about eight months when nothing happened. Everything that I wrote crumbled up, and then it became a self-destructive thing - when you begin to doubt yourself, when doubt turns into - it's sort of like impotence. Once impotent, you're forever impotent. Because you're always worried about being impotent.
Rod Serling Quotes: When I first went into
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.
Rod Serling Quotes: You can become much more
I'd rather go along with this sense of illusion that I'm a neutral beast going along through life doing everything that's preordained.
Rod Serling Quotes: I'd rather go along with
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.
Rod Serling Quotes: If the producer doesn't like
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.
Rod Serling Quotes: Over the long haul I'd
A basic "must" for every writer: A simple solitude-physical & mental.
Rod Serling Quotes: A basic
You must always assume that the relationship between writer and producer is that of adversaries - however you slice it. They may be your dearest friends, and they'll invite you to dinner, but when all the smoke clears and the ozone lifts, your enemy is the producer, that's the guy you're competing with, and you have to battle him, just as if you were an adversary.
Rod Serling Quotes: You must always assume that
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.
Rod Serling Quotes: I don't think it's man's
This is not a new world - it is simply an extension of what began in the old one. It has patterned itself after every dictator who has ever planted the ripping imprint of a boot on the pages of history since the beginning of time. It has refinements ... technological advances ... and a more sophisticated approach to the destruction of human freedom. But like everyone of the super-states that preceded it - it has one iron rule: logic is an enemy and truth is a menace.
Rod Serling Quotes: This is not a new
This highway leads to the shadowy tip of reality: you're on a through route to the land of the different, the bizarre, the unexplainable ... Go as far as you like on this road. Its limits are only those of mind itself. Ladies and Gentlemen, you're entering the wondrous dimension of imagination ...
Next stop The Twilight Zone.
Rod Serling Quotes: This highway leads to the
Justice can span years. Retribution is not subject to a calendar.
Rod Serling Quotes: Justice can span years. Retribution
This is, if not a lifetime process, it's awfully close to it. The writer broadens, becomes deeper, becomes more observant, becomes more tempered, becomes much wiser over a period time passing. It is not something that is injected into him by a needle. It is not something that comes on a wave of flashing, explosive light one night and say, 'Huzzah! Eureka! I've got it!' and then proceeds to write the great American novel in eleven days. It doesn't work that way. It's a long, tedious, tough, frustrating process, but never, ever be put aside by the fact that it's hard.
Rod Serling Quotes: This is, if not a
If you're really a good writer and deserve that honored position, then by God, you'll write, and you'll be read, and you'll be produced somehow. It just works that way. If you're just a simple ordinary day-to-day craftsman, no different than most, then the likelihood is that you probably won't make it in writing.
Rod Serling Quotes: If you're really a good
Good evening, and welcome to a private showing of three paintings, displayed here for the first time. Each is a collectors' item in its own way - not because of any special artistic quality, but because each captures on a canvas, and suspends in time and space, a frozen moment of a nightmare.
Rod Serling Quotes: Good evening, and welcome to
Farewell, Timothy Riley's Bar," Lane said softly. "Home of the nickel beer. Snooker emporium. Repository of Bluebird records, three for a dime. We honor you and your passing. Farewell. Farewell, Timothy Riley - and terraplanes and rumbleseats and saddle shoes and Helen Forrest and the Triple-C camps and Andy Hardy and Lum 'n' Abner and the world-champion New York Yankees! Rest in peace, you age of innocence - you beautiful, serene, carefree, pre-Pearl Harbor, long summer night. We'll never see your likes again.
Rod Serling Quotes: Farewell, Timothy Riley's Bar,
A word to the wise to all the children of the twentieth century, whether their concern be pediatrics or geriatrics, whether they crawl on hands and knees and wear diapers or walk with a cane and comb their beards. There's a wondrous magic to Christmas, and there's a special power reserved for little people. In short, there's nothing mightier than the meek, and a merry Christmas to each and all.
Rod Serling Quotes: A word to the wise
Emmies, for example, most of that's bullshit. Oscars are even worse. We have a strange, terrible affliction in this town. Everybody walks around bent-backed from slapping each other on the backs so much. It looks like arthritis but it isn't. It's hunger for recognition. And it's sort of like, well, I'll scratch you this time if you'll scratch me next time. That kind of thing.
Rod Serling Quotes: Emmies, for example, most of
Apparently on the screen I look tall, ageless, and damned close to omniscient-delivering jeopardy-laden warnings through gritted teeth. But when people see me on the street, they say 'by God, this kid is 5 foot 5, he's got a broken nose, and looks about as foreboding as a bank teller on a lunch break.'
Rod Serling Quotes: Apparently on the screen I
And what I further don't understand is how little you appreciate the nature of your departure. Think of all the poor souls who go in violent accidents. These are the nonprecognition victim. We are not permitted to forewarn them. You, Mr. Bookman, fall into the category of natural causes.
Rod Serling Quotes: And what I further don't
Ideas come from the Earth. They come from every human experience that you've either witnessed or have heard about, translated into your brain in your own sense of dialogue, in your own language form. Ideas are born from what is smelled, heard, seen, experienced, felt, emotionalized. Ideas are probably in the air, like little tiny items of ozone.
Rod Serling Quotes: Ideas come from the Earth.
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.
Rod Serling Quotes: The major difference frequently is
I write much better in the nonconfines of the early morning than I do the clutter of the day.
Rod Serling Quotes: I write much better in
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.
Rod Serling Quotes: The writer's no different. When
A sickness known as hate; not a virus, not a microbe, not a germ - but a sickness nonetheless, highly contagious, deadly in its effects. Don't look for it in the Twilight Zone - look for it in a mirror. Look for it before the light goes out altogether.
Rod Serling Quotes: A sickness known as hate;
And something inside the young man cracked. The small compartment in the back of his mind, where man closets his fears, ties them up, controls and commands them, broke open and they surged across brain and nerves and muscles - a nightmare flood in open rebellion.
Rod Serling Quotes: And something inside the young
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.
Rod Serling Quotes: Someplace between apathy and anarchy
I don't believe in reincarnation. That's a cop-out, I know. I don't really want to be reincarnated.
Rod Serling Quotes: I don't believe in reincarnation.
Star Trek, I thought, was a very inconsistent show, which at times sparkled with true ingenuity and pure science fiction approaches, and other times was more carnival-like, and very much more the creature of television than the creature of a legitimate literary form.
Rod Serling Quotes: Star Trek, I thought, was
Essentially, the scripts are not that different. Let's say, in literary terms, it's the difference between writing horizontally and writing vertically. In live television, you wrote much more vertically. You had to probe people because you didn't have money or sets or any of the physical dimensions that film will allow you. So you generally probed people a little bit more. Film writing is much more horizontal. You can insert anything you want: meadows, battlefields, the Taj Mahal, a cast of thousands. But essentially, writing a story is writing a story.
Rod Serling Quotes: Essentially, the scripts are not
To My Children,
I'm dedicating my little story to you; doubtless you will be among the very few who will ever read it. It seems war stories aren't very well received at this point. I'm told they're out-dated, untimely and as might be expected - make some unpleasant reading. And, as you have no doubt already perceived, human beings don't like to remember unpleasant things. They gird themselves with the armor of wishful thinking, protect themselves with a shield of impenetrable optimism, and, with a few exceptions, seem to accomplish their "forgetting" quite admirably.
But you, my children, I don't want you to be among those who choose to forget. I want you to read my stories and a lot of others like them. I want you to fill your heads with Remarque and Tolstoy and Ernie Pyle. I want you to know what shrapnel, and "88's" and mortar shells and mustard gas mean. I want you to feel, no matter how vicariously, a semblance of the feeling of a torn limb, a burnt patch of flesh, the crippling, numbing sensation of fear, the hopeless emptiness of fatigue. All these things are complimentary to the province of War and they should be taught and demonstrated in classrooms along with the more heroic aspects of uniforms, and flags, and honor and patriotism. I have no idea what your generation will be like. In mine we were to enjoy "Peace in our time". A very well meaning gentleman waved his umbrella and shouted those very words...less than a year before the whole world went to war.
Rod Serling Quotes: To My Children,<br />I'm dedicating
Formerly, a fixture of the summer, formerly a rather minor component to a hot July, but throughout his life, a man beloved by the children, and therefore a most important man.
Rod Serling Quotes: Formerly, a fixture of the
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.
Rod Serling Quotes: I find dictating in the
If you write beautifully, you write beautifully, that's all.
Rod Serling Quotes: If you write beautifully, you
Imagination ... its limits are only those of the mind itself.
Rod Serling Quotes: Imagination ... its limits are
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.
Rod Serling Quotes: I'm sufficiently independent to know
There are weapons that are simply thoughts. For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy.
Rod Serling Quotes: There are weapons that are
Infinitely more taboos, on television.
Rod Serling Quotes: Infinitely more taboos, on television.
I think Willa Cather did a short story called "Paul's Case," and in it, when he finally commits suicide, it says, "He surrendered to the black design of things." And that's what I anticipate death will be: a totally unconscious void in which you float through eternity with no particular consciousness of anything. I think once around is enough. I don't want to start it all over again.
Rod Serling Quotes: I think Willa Cather did
There is nothing in the dark that isn't there when the lights are on.
Rod Serling Quotes: There is nothing in the
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.
Rod Serling Quotes: You're traveling through another dimension,
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.
Rod Serling Quotes: According to the Bible, God
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.
Rod Serling Quotes: Most shows, buying shows, have
Personally, my daughter's wedding gave me a tremendous pleasure. And the wedding was a radiant event and I enjoyed it. I was afraid I'd cry. I'm given to crying at odd times, and I was very much afraid of the emotionalism of that moment, but I didn't even come close to crying.
Rod Serling Quotes: Personally, my daughter's wedding gave
The tendency when you dictate is to overwrite, because you're not counting pages, you don't really know what the hell the page count is.
Rod Serling Quotes: The tendency when you dictate
It may be said with a degree of assurance that not everything that meets the eye is as it appears.
Rod Serling Quotes: It may be said with
We're developing a new citizenry. One that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won't be able to think.
Rod Serling Quotes: We're developing a new citizenry.
I've written all that I've wanted to write to date.
Rod Serling Quotes: I've written all that I've
I've never planned ahead.I just sort of go through life checking the menu of three meals that day. I never worry about tomorrow. It's only since I've gotten older that I've begun to wonder about time running out. Is it sufficient unto itself that I don't plan? Because maybe next Thursday won't come one day. And then, I'm concerned about that. But that's not uniquely the writer's concern, that's the concern of every middle-aged man who looks in the mirror.
Rod Serling Quotes: I've never planned ahead.I just
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.
Rod Serling Quotes: I don't enjoy any of
Writers vary tremendously. Was it Tom Wolfe who stood up or was it [Ernest] Hemingway who had to stand up? I don't know.
Rod Serling Quotes: Writers vary tremendously. Was it
Some people possess talent, others are possessed by it. When that happens, a talent becomes a curse.
Rod Serling Quotes: Some people possess talent, others
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