Quotes from Rod Serling

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

A sickness known as hate; not a virus, not a microbe, not a germ - but a sickness nonetheless, highly contagious, deadly in its effects. Don't look for it in the Twilight Zone - look for it in a mirror. Look for it before the light goes out altogether.

Every man is put on earth condemned to die. Time and method of execution unknown.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

How do you take a medium seriously when it is so laced with high decibel reminders to run right out to your supermarket, your drug store, your friendly car dealer, your favorite department store and buy.... That's the twentieth century marching song — buy!

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 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 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.

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.

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