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Rod Serling QUOTES

Rod Serling QUOTES

41 " I was deeply interested in conveying what is a deeply felt conviction of my own. This is simply to suggest that human beings must involve themselves in the anguish of other human beings. This, I submit to you, is not a political thesis at all. It is simply an expression of what I would hope might be ultimately a simple humanity for humanity's sake. "

― Rod Serling

42 " 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. But this gentleman was suffering the worldly disease of insufferable optimism. He and his fellow humans kept polishing the rose colored glasses when actually they should have taken them off. They were sacrificing reason and reality for a brief and temporal peace of mind, the same peace of mind that many of my contemporaries derive by steadfastly refraining from remembering the War that came before.
[excerpt from a dedication to an unpublished short story, "First Squad, First Platoon"; from Serling to his as yet unborn children] "

― Rod Serling

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

― Rod Serling

44 " 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

45 " 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

46 " The writer in any field, and particularly the television writer, runs into "dry periods"—weeks or months when it seems that everything he writes goes the rounds and ultimately gets nowhere. This is not only a bad moment but an endless one. I remember a five-month period late in 1952 when my diet consisted chiefly of black coffee and fingernails. I'd written six half-hour television plays and each one had been rejected at least five times. What this kind of thing does to a family budget is obvious; and what it does to the personality of the writer is even worse. "

― Rod Serling , Patterns: Four Television Plays with the Author's Personal Commentaries

47 " 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 of its own for the children … and the children yet unborn. (a pause) And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to The Twilight Zone! "

― Rod Serling , Stories from the Twilight Zone

48 " 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

49 " You gotta BELIEVE, Bolie! "

― Rod Serling

50 " Beasley was a little man whose face looked like an X ray of an ulcer. "

― Rod Serling , Stories from the Twilight Zone

51 " 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 , Stories from the Twilight Zone

52 " Never make the mistake of assuming the audience is any less intelligent than you are. "

― Rod Serling

53 " 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 , More Stories from the Twilight Zone

54 " No audience likes a writer's opinion thrust down their gullet as simply a tract. It has to be dramatized and made acceptably palatable within a dramatic form. "

― Rod Serling

55 " Trying to be the best at anything carries its own special risks, in or out of the Twilight Zone. "

― Rod Serling

56 " The cemetery, my dear. The repository of the deceased. The tomb … the vault … the crypt … the resting place … the ossuary. Dig? Boot Hill, baby.” Pamela "

― Rod Serling , Rod Serling's Night Gallery (Rod Serling's Night Gallery #1)

57 " 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 of its own for the children … and the children yet unborn. "

― Rod Serling , Stories from the Twilight Zone

58 " 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 , The Twilight Zone: Complete Stories

59 " 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 , The Twilight Zone: Complete Stories

60 " As he looked at his reflection in the dresser mirror, he felt that recurring surprise that the tall, attractive man staring back was he, and beyond that was the wonder that the image bore no real relationship to the man himself. "

― Rod Serling , Stories from the Twilight Zone