Rod Serling Quotes

I don't feel, God dictated that I should write.

You can be a hunchback and a dwarf and what-all. If you write beautifully, you can write beautifully.

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.

I guess we all have a little vaunting itch for immortality, I guess that must be it.

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

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.

There are a lot I'm proud of, and a lot I wish the hell I'd never written.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

The good agent probably is not the reader, he's just the guy who can put together a deal.

I don't have close relationships with agents. They're friends, but they're not confidants.

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.

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

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.

Over the long haul I'd say that most directors I've worked with have been pretty sensitive to the quality of the interpreted scenes.

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.

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

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.'

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

(on being born on Christmas Day, 1924) I was a Christmas present that was delivered unwrapped.

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

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

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

Infinitely more taboos, on television.

If you write beautifully, you write beautifully, that's all.

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

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

Seeing does not always believe.

As long as they talk about you, you're not really dead, as long as they speak your name, you continue. A legend doesn't die, just because the man dies.

he's not a piece of meat you can job off the market by the pound. because, if you do, maish, if you do, you'll rot in hell.

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