Rod Serling Quotations | Page 2

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Personally, my daughter's wedding gave me a tremendous pleasure.

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

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.

I don't believe in reincarnation. That's a cop-out, I know. I don't really want to be reincarnated.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

Writers, like most human beings, are adaptable creatures. They can learn to accept subordination without growing fond of it. No writer can forever stand in the wings and watch other people take the curtain calls while his own contributions get lost in the shuffle.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Somewhere between apathy and anarchy lies the thinking human being.

I was a Christmas present that was delivered unwrapped.

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.

Up there, up there in the vastness of space, in the void that is sky, up there is an enemy known as isolation. It sits there in the stars waiting, waiting with the patience of eons, forever waiting in the Twilight Zone.