Rod Serling Quotes

I think the essence of the argument has always been, first of all, the Guild doesn't want writing on spec. And that's been a major problem over the years. But obviously, to the young writer that's unfair and it's discriminatory, and it can be very hurtful to one's career.

I'd love to be able to write an in-depth piece of what causes men like [Richard] Nixon and [H.R.]Haldeman and [John] Ehrlichman and all the rest of them not only to run, but what causes us to vote for them.

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.

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.

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

You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension: a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You’re moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You’ve just crossed over into… the Twilight Zone.

Whenever you write, whatever you write, never make the mistake of assuming the audience is any less intelligent than you are.

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

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.

Every writer is a frustrated actor who recites his lines in the hidden auditorium of his skull.

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

Some people possess talent, others are possessed by it. When that happens, a talent becomes a curse.

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

An Ingmar Bergman film would probably owe a sizeable bulk of its import and its direction and its quality to the directorial end and to the director because it's uniquely a Bergman film. But that again is not the general - no, that's much more the exception than the rule.

How can you put out a meaningful drama when every fifteen minutes proceedings are interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits with toilet paper? No dramatic art form should be dictated and controlled by men whose training and instincts are cut of an entirely different cloth. The fact remains that these gentlemen sell consumer goods, not an art form.

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

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.

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.

I've written all that I've wanted to write to date.

There are a lot I'm proud of, and a lot I wish the hell I'd never written.

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

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

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.

There is nothing in the dark that isn't there when the lights are on.

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

You're looking at a species of flimsy little two-legged animals with extremely small heads whose name is Man...Very tiny undeveloped brain; comes from primitive planet named Earth. Calls himself 'Samuel Conrad'. And he will remain here in his cage with the running water and the electricity and the central heat- as long as he lives. Samuel Conrad has found the Twilight Zone.

Being like everybody is the same as being nobody.

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.

There's a marvelous and unique man named Frank Gilroy. He's the only writer I know who absolutely, pointedly refuses to do any changes that he doesn't feel are absolutely essential and totally in keeping with his own view and perspective. But not too many writers are that independent and that strong-willed.

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

Just drawing back and drawing in; becoming narcissistic.

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.

Ideas are born from what is smelled, heard, seen, experienced, felt, emotionalized.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Imagination... its limits are only those of the mind itself.

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.

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.

Science fiction makes the implausible possible, while science fantasy makes the impossible plausible.

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.

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.

You know, writer can write about the Foreign Legion without ever having been in the Foreign Legion, but that doesn't necessarily mean that what he's written doesn't necessarily reflect the nature of him as an individual - or her. Using the male gender because it's me speaking. I don't mean to put down the female.

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

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.

It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.