Richard Matheson
I think we're yearning for something beyond the every day. And I will tell you I don't believe in the supernatural, I believe in the supernormal.
To me there is nothing that goes against nature. If it seems incomprehensible, it's only because we haven't been able to understand it yet.
I had to write about realistic circumstances. That's the way my brain works. And I think that gave me a sort of place in the field.
I could never write about strange kingdoms. I could never do 'Harry Potter' or anything like that. Even when I did science-fiction, I didn't write about foreign planets and distant futures. I certainly never did fantasies about trolls living under bridges.
I wrote about real people and real circumstances and real neighborhoods. There was no crypt or castles or H.P. Lovecraft-type environments. They were just about normal people who had something bizarre happening to them in the neighborhood.
'I Am Legend' is quite unusual for its time. I just wanted to write a story about female boxers, and I couldn't get that going in my mind. I don't know exactly where the idea of just a man pitting himself against a robot boxer came from.
Thank you...for gracing my life with your lovely presence, for adding the sweet measure of your soul to my existence.Collection: Sweet
That which you believe becomes your worldCollection: Believe
How quickly one accepts the incredible if only one sees it enough.Collection: Incredibles
If men only felt about death as they do about sleep, all terrors would cease. . . Men sleep contentedly, assured that they will wake the following morning. They should feel the same about their lives.Collection: Morning
If you go too far in fantasy and break the string of logic, and become nonsensical, someone will surely remind you of your dereliction....Pound for pound, fantasy makes a tougher opponent for the creative person.Collection: Writing
In a world of monotonous horror there could be no salvation in wild dreaming.Collection: Dream
I think we're yearning for something beyond the every day. And I will tell you that I don't believe in the supernatural, I believe in the supernormal. To me there is nothing that goes against nature. If it seems incomprehensible, it's because we haven't been able to understand it yet.Collection: Believe
To me there is nothing that goes against nature. If it seems incomprehensible, its only because we havent been able to understand it yet.Collection: Able
Normalcy was a majority concept, the standard of many and not the standard of just one man.Collection: Men
It is my conviction that basic Reality is not all that perplexing. What seems difficult to assimilate are the manifold details of Reality, not its fundamental elements.Collection: Reality
When I'm writing, especially when I'm writing in first person, I don't think about the characterization, or how they are going to express themselves, I just express my own approach to these things. I think most writers can never divorce themselves from their private lives and personas; they are the ones that are writing. And the more they remove themselves from their own persona, the more, perhaps, mechanical the work becomes.Collection: Divorce
I hope people are reading my work in the future. I hope I have done more than frightened a couple of generations. I hope I've inspired a few people one way or another.Collection: Couple
Everyone has something to hide. And if they couldn't hide it the world would be in a lot worse mess than it is.Collection: Would Be
I'm sitting in my office trying to squeeze a story from my head. It is that kind of morning when you feel like melting the typewriter into a bar of steel and clubbing yourself to death with it. (“Advance Notice”)Collection: Morning
After a while, though, even the deepest sorrow faltered, even the most penetrating despair lost its scalpel edge.Collection: Feeling Sad
All of us have a path to follow and the path begins on earth.Collection: Earth
Our world is in profound danger. Mankind must establish a set of positive values with which to secure its own survival. This quest for enlightenment must begin now. It is essential that all men and women become aware of what they are, why they are here on Earth and what they must do to preserve civilization before it is too late.Collection: Men
To get married and have a family, is to grow up and mature. It's the only way. You can read philosophy books for a hundred years, but if you don't get married and have a family you will never get it. They soften you and shape you, mature you. Absolutely.Collection: Growing Up
Robert Neville looked out over the new people of the earth. He knew he did not belong to them; he knew that, like the vampires, he was anathema and black terror to be destroyed. And, abruptly, the concept came, amusing to him even in his pain. ... Full circle. A new terror born in death, a new superstition entering the unassailable fortress of forever. I am legend.Collection: Pain
I think What Dreams May Come is the most important (read effective) book I've written. It has caused a number of readers to lose their fear of death the finest tribute any writer could receive. ... Somewhere In Time is my favorite novel.Collection: Dream
How long did it take for a past to die?Collection: Past
…They think of suicide as a quick route to oblivion, an escape. Far from it. It merely alters a person from one form to another. Nothing can destroy the spirit. Suicide only precipitates a darker continuation of the same conditions from which escape was sought. A condition under circumstances so much more painful.Collection: Suicide
What would a Mohammedan vampire do if faced with a cross?Collection: Vampire
There we will, I pray, remain and learn and grow until the time when we will rise together to the ultimate heights, changing in appearance but never in devotion, sharing the transcendent glory of our love through all eternity.Collection: Together
He pretended it was the only thing that kept him from it. But, far back in his mind, he wondered if he could write anything. Often the question threw itself at him when he was least expecting it. You have four hours every morning, the statement would rise like a menacing wraith. You have time to write many thousands of words. Why don't you? And the answer was always lost in a tangle of becauses and wells and endless reasons that he clung to like a drowning man at straws.Collection: Morning
Somewhere In Time is the story of a love which transcends time , What Dreams May Come is the story of a love which transcends death . ... I feel that they represent the best writing I have done in the novel form.Collection: Dream
God, how impossible life is without money. Nothing can ever overcome it, it's everything when it's anything. How can I write in peace with endless worries of money, money, money? (“Disappearing Act”)Collection: Writing
We've forgotten much. How to struggle, how to rise to dizzy heights and sink to unparalleled depths. We no longer aspire to anything. Even the finer shades of despair are lost to us. We've ceased to be runners. We plod from structure to conveyance to employment and back again. We live within the boundaries that science has determined for us. The measuring stick is short and sweet. The full gamut of life is a brief, shadowy continuum that runs from gray to more gray. The rainbow is bleached. We hardly know how to doubt anymore. (“The Thing”)Collection: Running
(After death.) So few people who come across, possess awareness of any kind. All they bring along with them are worthless values. All they desire is continuation of what they had in life no matter how misguided or degraded. . . Will those people ever progress, even with our help?Collection: People
Heaven would never be heaven without you.Collection: Heaven
Now when I die, I shall only be dead.Collection: Dies
Because there was only one thing worse than dying. And that was knowing you were going to die. And where. And how. (“Death Ship”)Collection: Knowing
But it was hard to keep his hands still. He could almost feel them twitching emphatically with his strong desire to reach out and stroke the dog's head. He had such a terrible yearning to love something again, and the dog was such a beautiful ugly dog.Collection: Beautiful
I could never write about strange kingdoms. I could never do Harry Potter or anything like that. Even when I did science-fiction, I didnt write about foreign planets and distant futures. I certainly never did fantasies about trolls living under bridges.Collection: Writing
I can get pissed off very easily.Collection: Pissed Off
Memory was such a worthless thing, really. Nothing it dealt with was attainable. It was concerned with phantom acts and feelings, with all that was uncapturable except in thought. It was without satisfaction.Collection: Memories
I had to write about realistic circumstances. Thats the way my brain works. And I think that gave me a sort of place in the field.Collection: Writing
I don't believe terror and horror are just vicarious pleasures. I think it routes itself in your mind. It can affect your mind. Look at what's going on in the America today. The violence is just awful and I think a lot of has to do with what they are showing on the movies and television.Collection: Believe
Chris Nielsen: Thank you for every kindness. Thank you for our children. For the first time I saw them. Thank you for being someone I was always proud to be with. For your guts, for your sweetness. For how you always looked, for how I always wanted to touch you. God, you were my life. I apologize for everytime I ever failed you. Especially this one.Collection: Children
Our world is in profound danger. Mankind must establish a set of positive values with which to secure its own survival.Collection: Our World
Let the jagged edge of sobriety be now dulled.Collection: Sobriety
When you sleep, your dream world is as real to you as life, isn’t it?Collection: Dream
What condemnation could possibly be more harsh than one’s own, when self-pretense is no longer possible?Collection: Self
A man could get used to anything if he had to.Collection: Men