Rod Serling

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• 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: a man's seemingly palpable need to dislike someone other than himself.
  • Interview Los Angeles Times (1967)

• 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.
  • Speech at Binghamton Community High School (1968)

• 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.
  • Speech at Moorpark College, Moorpark, California (3 December 1968)

• I think the destiny of all men is not to sit in the rubble of their own making but to reach out for an ultimate perfection which is to be had. At the moment, it is a dream. But as of the moment we clasp hands with our neighbor, we build the first span to bridge the gap between the young and the old. At this hour, it’s a wish. But we have it within our power to make it a reality. If you want to prove that God is not dead, first prove that man is alive.
  • Speech at Moorpark College, Moorpark, California (3 December 1968)

• "...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.”
  • "About Writing for Television", his foreword to a collection of teleplays ("Patterns")

• "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 insticts are cut of an entirely different cloth. The fact remains that these gentlemen sell consumer goods, not an art form."
  • Quoted in documentary 'Rod Serling: Submitted for Your Approval'

About Rod Serling

• No one could know Serling, or view or read his work, without recognizing his deep affection for humanity ... and his determination to enlarge our horizons by giving us a better understanding of ourselves.
  • Gene Roddenberry

• I knew Rod and socialized with him also. And, of course, I worked with him, too; we had previously collaborated on some westerns and detective stories. He was really a sweetheart. He was a writer himself, which was extremely unusual back then, for someone who started a series to already be a successful writer. He had had lots of experience with production people, so he understood that he needed to surround himself with the best writers he could get, and then let them do their thing. There wasn’t a line in any of the Twilight Zones that I wrote that wasn’t mine.
  • Richard Matheson, He Is Legend Cinema Spy interview, December 11, 2007