Rod Serling

In his grave, we praise him for his decency - but when he walked amongst us, we responded with no decency of our own.

— Rod Serling

There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone.

— Rod Serling

It is said that science fiction and fantasy are two different things. Science fiction is the improbable made possible, and fantasy is the impossible made probable.

— Rod Serling

I happen to think that the singular evil of our time is prejudice. It is from this evil that all other evils grow and multiply. 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

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

— Rod Serling

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

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

I was bitter about everything and at loose ends when I got out of the service. I think I turned to writing to get it off my chest.

— Rod Serling

I wish to Christ that I had written a Stagecoach drama starring John Wayne instead.

— Rod Serling

...a medium best suited to illumine and dramatize the issues of the times has its product pressed into a mold, painted lily-white, and has its dramatic teeth yanked out one by one.

— Rod Serling

Radio, in terms of ... drama, dug its own grave. It had aimed downward, had become cheap and unbelievable, and had willingly settled for second best.

— Rod Serling

How can you put out a meaningful drama when every fifteen minutes proceedings are interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits with toilet paper? No dramatic art form should be dictated and controlled by men whose training and instincts are cut of an entirely different cloth. The fact remains that these gentlemen sell consumer goods, not an art form.

— Rod Serling

Hollywood's a great place to live... if you're a grapefruit.

— Rod Serling

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

— Rod Serling

I was a Christmas present that was delivered unwrapped.

— Rod Serling

I got the idea for the pilot while walking through an empty lot of a movie studio. There were all the evidences of a community but with no people. I felt at the time a kind of encroaching loneliness, and desolation; a feeling of how nightmarish it would be to wind up in a city with no inhabitants.

— Rod Serling

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

For the first time in television a writer will have the opportunity to let his imagination take him where ever he wants to. The sky is no longer the limit.

— Rod Serling

The first sale, that's the one that comes with magic.

— Rod Serling

As I get older the urge to write gets less and less; I've pretty much spewed out everything I have to say, none of which has been particularly monumental; nothing that will stand the test of time. Good writing like wine has to age well, and my stuff has been momentarily adequate.

— Rod Serling

Every writer is a frustrated actor who recites his lines in the hidden auditorium of his skull.

— Rod Serling

I really can’t claim to being a science-fiction man either. Fantasy was really more my bag. And I’m very much a Johnny-Come-Lately into that. The guys – the really key men – like Asimov, Clarke, Bradbury – they all preceded me by years and years and have a body of literature to show for it. I have nothing but a television show. My only claim is that I put science-fiction and fantasy into a mass media more than any other person.

— Rod Serling

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

— Rod Serling