Top 100 Rod Serling Quotes
#1. The crowd slowly dispersed in soft, whispering groups, voices muted by the fascination of death that all men carry with them in small pockets deep inside them.
Rod Serling
#2. 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
#3. You can be a hunchback and a dwarf and what-all. If you write beautifully, you can write beautifully.
Rod Serling
#4. 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
#5. 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
#6. The worst aspect of our time is prejudice ... In almost everything I've written, there is a thread of this - man's seemingly palpable need to dislike someone other than himself.
Rod Serling
#7. 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
#8. I found that it was all right to have Martians saying things Democrats and Republicans could never say.
Rod Serling
#9. 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.
Rod Serling
#10. 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.
Rod Serling
#11. I write much better in the nonconfines of the early morning than I do the clutter of the day.
Rod Serling
#12. 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
#13. Coming up with ideas is the easiest thing on earth. Putting them down is the hardest.
Rod Serling
#14. The good agent probably is not the reader, he's just the guy who can put together a deal.
Rod Serling
#15. 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
#16. 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
#17. 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
#18. 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
#19. 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.
Rod Serling
#20. 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.
Rod Serling
#21. I would guess that the price of the script really is secondary. The credit is much more the essence.
Rod Serling
#22. 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.
Rod Serling
#23. 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.
Rod Serling
#24. Hollywood's a great place to live ... if you're a grapefruit.
Rod Serling
#25. You unlock the door with the key of imagination.
Rod Serling
#26. For civilization to survive, the human race has to remain civilized
Rod Serling
#27. Most screenplays, most motion pictures, owe much more to the screenplay. Ingmar Bergman has such an economy of language, so little language in his piece, it is so visual, his moods are introduced and buttressed by camera rather than by word or character. But again, that's unique.
Rod Serling
#28. 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.
Rod Serling
#29. There are a lot I'm proud of, and a lot I wish the hell I'd never written.
Rod Serling
#30. 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
#31. 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
#32. How can you put on a meaningful drama when, every fifteen minutes, proceedings are interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits with toilet paper?
Rod Serling
#33. 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
#34. Every Superstate has one iron rule: logic is an enemy and the truth is a menace.
Rod Serling
#35. I think I would like to be in Victorian times. Small town. Bandstands. Summer. That kind of thing. Without disease.
Rod Serling
#37. A basic "must" for every writer: A simple solitude-physical & mental.
Rod Serling
#38. Any state, any entity, any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of man, that state is obsolete
Rod Serling
#39. I've written all that I've wanted to write to date.
Rod Serling
#40. 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
#41. 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
#42. 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
#43. 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
#44. Justice can span years. Retribution is not subject to a calendar.
Rod Serling
#45. A place . . . a time . . . where a man can live his life full measure.
Rod Serling
#46. 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.
Rod Serling
#47. 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.
Rod Serling
#48. 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
#49. 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
#50. 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
#51. 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.
Rod Serling
#52. 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
#53. 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.
Rod Serling
#54. I don't believe in reincarnation. That's a cop-out, I know. I don't really want to be reincarnated.
Rod Serling
#55. 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
#56. If you need drugs to be a good writer, you are not a good writer.
Rod Serling
#57. 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
#58. I don't have any system. I dictate a lot, through a machine, and I also have a secretary. But I used to type just like everybody else.
Rod Serling
#59. 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
#60. Why do I write? I guess that's been asked of every writer. I don't know. It isn't any massive compulsion.
Rod Serling
#61. 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
#62. Science fiction makes the implausible possible, while science fantasy makes the impossible plausible.
Rod Serling
#63. 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
#64. 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
#65. 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.
Rod Serling
#66. If you want to prove that God is not dead first prove that man is alive.
Rod Serling
#67. Every writer is a frustrated actor who recites his lines in the hidden auditorium of his skull.
Rod Serling
#68. I don't feel, God dictated that I should write.
Rod Serling
#69. Ideas are born from what is smelled, heard, seen, experienced, felt, emotionalized.
Rod Serling
#70. 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
#71. There are weapons that are simply thoughts. For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy.
Rod Serling
#72. 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.
Rod Serling
#73. 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.
Rod Serling
#75. 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.
Rod Serling
#76. 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
#77. Some people possess talent, others are possessed by it. When that happens, a talent becomes a curse.
Rod Serling
#78. 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.
Rod Serling
#79. I guess Requiem for a Heavyweight as old as it is was as honest a piece as I've ever done.
Rod Serling
#80. Not since the British raided Cologne had so many bombs landed in such a small space in such a short time.
Rod Serling
#81. 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
#82. Being like everybody is the same as being nobody.
Rod Serling
#83. I find it very difficult to live through the censorship of profanity on television.
Rod Serling
#84. 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
#85. 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.
Rod Serling
#86. Trying to be the best at anything carries its own special risks, in or out of the Twilight Zone.
Rod Serling
#87. Whenever you write, whatever you write, never make the mistake of assuming the audience is any less intelligent than you are.
Rod Serling
#88. Infinitely more taboos, on television.
Rod Serling
#89. 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.
Rod Serling
#90. Somewhere between apathy and anarchy lies the thinking human being.
Rod Serling
#91. If in any quest for magic, in any search for sorcery, witchery, legerdemain, first check the human spirit.
Rod Serling
#92. 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
#93. 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
#94. I don't know what my friends do. Generally they become producers. That way they can stop writing!
Rod Serling
#95. 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
#96. If you write beautifully, you write beautifully, that's all.
Rod Serling
#97. Bias and prejudice make me angry ... more than anything.
Rod Serling
#98. I guess we all have a little vaunting itch for immortality, I guess that must be it.
Rod Serling
#99. 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.
Rod Serling
#100. Every man is put on earth condemned to die. Time and method of execution unknown.
Rod Serling
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