Rod Serling Quotes

The good agent probably is not the reader, he's just the guy who can put together a deal.

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.

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

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.

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.

Writers vary tremendously. Was it Tom Wolfe who stood up or was it [Ernest] Hemingway who had to stand up? I don't know.

It may be said with a degree of assurance that not everything that meets the eye is as it appears.

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 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.

Do I want to start my own production company? No, I doubt it. I'm too old for that. I don't want to start anything.

I don't think playing it safe constitutes a retreat, necessarily. In other words, I don't think if, by playing safe he means we are not going to delve into controversy, then if that's what he means he's quite right. I'm not going to delve into controversy. Somebody asked me the other day if this means that I'm going to be a meek conformist, and my answer is no. I'm just acting the role of a tired non-conformist.

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.

I don't know what my friends do. Generally they become producers. That way they can stop writing!

If you want to prove that God is not dead, first prove that man is alive.

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

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

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.

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.

I guess we all have a little vaunting itch for immortality, I guess that must be it.

I would guess that the price of the script really is secondary. The credit is much more the essence.

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.

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.

The most important thing about the first sale is for the very first time in your life something written has value and proven value because somebody has given you money for the words that you've written, and that's terribly important, it's a tremendous boon to the ego, to your sense of self-reliance, to your feeling about your own talent.

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.

I don't believe in reincarnation. That's a cop-out. . . . I anticipate death will be a totally unconscious void in which you float through eternity with no particular consciousness of anything.

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.

I suppose we think euphemistically that all writers write because they have something to say that is truthful and honest and pointed and important. And I suppose I subscribe to that, too. But God knows when I look back over thirty years of professional writing, I'm hard-pressed to come up with anything that's important. Some things are literate, some things are interesting, some things are classy, but very damn little is important.

There are weapons that are simply thoughts. For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy.

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

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.

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 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.

If you write beautifully, you write beautifully, that's all.

Fantasy is the impossible made probable. Science Fiction is the improbable made possible.

There are millions of ways to not be writing. You say you're not in the mood, you'll pick it up tomorrow.

Seeing does not always believe.

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.

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

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.

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.

If you write, fix pipes, grade papers, lay bricks or drive a taxi - do it with a sense of pride. And do it the best you know how. Be cognizant and sympathetic to the guy alongside, because he wants a place in the sun, too. And always...always look past his color, his creed, his religion and the shape of his ears. Look for the whole person. Judge him as the whole person.

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.

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.

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

Writing is a demanding profession and a selfish one. And because it is selfish and demanding, because it is compulsive and exacting, I didn't embrace it. I succumbed to it.

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.

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

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