Rod Serling
I choose to think of tv audience as nameless, formless, faceless people who are all like me. And anything that I write, if I like it, they'll like it.Collection: Writing
Personally, my daughter's wedding gave me a tremendous pleasure.Collection: Daughter
There are a lot I'm proud of, and a lot I wish the hell I'd never written.Collection: Wish
(on being born on Christmas Day, 1924) I was a Christmas present that was delivered unwrapped.Collection: Twilight Zone
I've never really topped myself, because awards in themselves really don't reflect major accomplishment. It's kind of a strange, backslapping ritual that we go through in this town where you get awards for almost everything. For surviving the day you're going to get awards.Collection: Awards
Apparently on the screen I look tall, ageless, and damned close to omniscient-delivering jeopardy-laden warnings through gritted teeth. But when people see me on the street, they say 'by God, this kid is 5 foot 5, he's got a broken nose, and looks about as foreboding as a bank teller on a lunch break.'Collection: Kids
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.Collection: Quality
I guess Requiem for a Heavyweight as old as it is was as honest a piece as I've ever done.Collection: Heavyweights
If you write beautifully, you write beautifully, that's all.Collection: Writing
I suppose we think euphemistically that all writers write because they have something to say that is truthful and honest and pointed and important. And I suppose I subscribe to that, too. But God knows when I look back over thirty years of professional writing, I'm hard-pressed to come up with anything that's important. Some things are literate, some things are interesting, some things are classy, but very damn little is important.Collection: Writing
The writer's no different. When he's rejected, that paper is rejected, in a sense, a sizeable fragment of the writer is rejected as well. It's a piece of himself that's being turned down.Collection: Different
Somehow, some way, incredibly enough, good writing ultimately gets recognized. If you're a really good writer and deserve that honored position, then by God, you'll write, and you'll be read.Collection: Writing
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.Collection: Suicide
You can be a hunchback and a dwarf and what-all. If you write beautifully, you can write beautifully.Collection: Writing
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.Collection: Men
I don't know what my friends do. Generally they become producers. That way they can stop writing!Collection: Writing
Just drawing back and drawing in; becoming narcissistic.Collection: Drawing
There are millions of ways to not be writing. You say you're not in the mood, you'll pick it up tomorrow.Collection: Writing
People are put down in television now, not because they're not qualitative, not because they're not talented - but because there's no room for them, and worse than that, there's nowhere they can find exposure. Their own good talent may die of mourning, just for want of having somebody read what they've written. I don't presume to say how we can best provide platforms for new writers to get read. I don't know. But therein lies the major problem.Collection: Lying
I would guess that Ray Bradbury would be equally resentful of what they did with Illustrated Man, which, you know, took a central idea thesis of his and pissed all over it - made it into one of the worst movies ever made.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Writing
Infinitely more taboos, on television.Collection: Television
Writers vary tremendously. Was it Tom Wolfe who stood up or was it [Ernest] Hemingway who had to stand up? I don't know.Collection: Stood Up
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.Collection: Strong
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.Collection: Running
Science fiction makes the implausible possible, while science fantasy makes the impossible plausible.Collection: Fiction
I don't believe in reincarnation. That's a cop-out, I know. I don't really want to be reincarnated.Collection: Believe
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.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Damn You
Not since the British raided Cologne had so many bombs landed in such a small space in such a short time.Collection: Space
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.'Collection: Writing
You could do much more in movies than you could on TV, and even movies were heavily censored. But in television, the areas of timorousness were fairly laid out. Race relations. Sex. Politics. There was a whole conglomeration of taboo themes. And even to date, though television has become a much freer medium, it's still far less free, far less creatively untrammeled than are the movies. They're infinitely more adult in that respect.Collection: Sex
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.Collection: Wings
I've written all that I've wanted to write to date.Collection: Writing
Why do I write? I guess that's been asked of every writer. I don't know. It isn't any massive compulsion.Collection: Writing
I guess we all have a little vaunting itch for immortality, I guess that must be it.Collection: Littles
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.Collection: Machines
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.Collection: Independent
I'm frequently surprised, sometimes bugged off, and sometimes happy, depending on the actor. It's a fact of life that just as often as not an actor can breathe life into a line as he can destroy it by misinterpretation, and I've been blessed frequently by having good actors.Collection: Blessed
If it sounds good as you say it, likely as not it'll sound good when an actor's saying it.Collection: Sound
The most important thing about the first sale is for the very first time in your life something written has value and proven value because somebody has given you money for the words that you've written, and that's terribly important, it's a tremendous boon to the ego, to your sense of self-reliance, to your feeling about your own talent.Collection: Self
I remember the first sale I made was a hundred and fifty dollars for a radio script, and, as poor as I was, I didn't cash the check for three months. I kept showing it to people.Collection: People
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.Collection: Doubt
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.Collection: Together
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.Collection: Independent
Emmies, for example, most of that's bullshit. Oscars are even worse. We have a strange, terrible affliction in this town. Everybody walks around bent-backed from slapping each other on the backs so much. It looks like arthritis but it isn't. It's hunger for recognition. And it's sort of like, well, I'll scratch you this time if you'll scratch me next time. That kind of thing.Collection: Bullshit
The ultimate obscenity is not caring, not doing something about what you feel, not feeling! Just drawing back and drawing in; becoming narcissistic.Collection: Caring
Fantasy is the impossible made probable. Science Fiction is the improbable made possible.Collection: Writing
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.Collection: Years