Latest Rod Serling Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

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

  Rod Serling

  Littles, Immortality

  Source: www.rodserling.com

• 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.

  Rod Serling

  Years, People, Care

• Now death is with us in such abundance and hovers over us in so massive a form that we don't have time to invent a mythology, nor is our creativity directed toward same. Now it's to prevent death.

  Rod Serling

  Creativity, Abundance, Form

  Source: www.rodserling.com

• 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.

  Rod Serling

  Men, Example, Saws

  Source: www.rodserling.com

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

  Rod Serling

  Daughter, My Daughter, Pleasure

  Source: www.rodserling.com

• Personally, my daughter's wedding gave me a tremendous pleasure. And the wedding was a radiant event and I enjoyed it. I was afraid I'd cry. I'm given to crying at odd times, and I was very much afraid of the emotionalism of that moment, but I didn't even come close to crying.

  Rod Serling

  Daughter, Events, Cry

• 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.

  Rod Serling

  Suicide, Thinking, Design

  Source: www.rodserling.com

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

  Rod Serling

  Summer, Thinking, Disease

  Source: www.rodserling.com

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

  Rod Serling

  Believe, Want, Cop

  Source: www.rodserling.com

• You know, writer can write about the Foreign Legion without ever having been in the Foreign Legion, but that doesn't necessarily mean that what he's written doesn't necessarily reflect the nature of him as an individual - or her. Using the male gender because it's me speaking. I don't mean to put down the female.

  Rod Serling

  Writing, Mean, Males

• 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.

  Rod Serling

  Writing, Thinking, People

• 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.

  Rod Serling

  Different, Pieces, Paper

  Source: www.rodserling.com

• 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.

  Rod Serling

  Doubt, Want, Company

  Source: www.rodserling.com

• 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.

  Rod Serling

  Lying, People, Mourning

  Source: www.rodserling.com

• Most screenplays, most motion pictures, owe much more to the screenplay. Ingmar Bergman has such an economy of language, so little language in his piece, it is so visual, his moods are introduced and buttressed by camera rather than by word or character. But again, that's unique.

  Rod Serling

  Character, Unique, Cameras

• 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.

  Rod Serling

  Together, Impatient, Packages

  Source: www.rodserling.com

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

  Rod Serling

  Wish, Proud, Hell

  Source: www.rodserling.com

• 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.

  Rod Serling

  Quality, Directors, Film

  Source: www.rodserling.com

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

  Rod Serling

  Heavyweights, Done, Pieces

  Source: www.rodserling.com

• 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.

  Rod Serling

  Long, Quality, Directors

  Source: www.rodserling.com

• 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.

  Rod Serling

  Blessed, Actors, Lines

  Source: www.rodserling.com

• I'd love to be able to write an in-depth piece of what causes men like [Richard] Nixon and [H.R.]Haldeman and [John] Ehrlichman and all the rest of them not only to run, but what causes us to vote for them.

  Rod Serling

  Running, Writing, Men

• 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.

  Rod Serling

  Men, Ideas, Rays

  Source: www.rodserling.com

• 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.

  Rod Serling

  Strong, Independent, Unique

  Source: www.rodserling.com

• I'm an affluent screenwriter and all that - I'm a known screenwriter, but I'm not in the fraternity of the very, very major people. I would say a guy like Ernie Lehman, William Goldman, and a few others are quite a cut above.

  Rod Serling

  Cutting, People, Guy

  Source: www.rodserling.com