Top 100 Rod Serling Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “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

52. “According to the Bible, God created the heavens and the Earth. It is man’s prerogative – and woman’s – to create their own particular and private hell.”

— Rod Serling

53. “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.”

— Rod Serling

54. “If in any quest for magic, in any search for sorcery, witchery, legerdemain, first check the human spirit.”

— Rod Serling

55. “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.”

— Rod Serling

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

— Rod Serling

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

— Rod Serling

58. “Never make the mistake of assuming the audience is any less intelligent than you are.”

— Rod Serling

59. “I don’t enjoy any of the process of writing. I enjoy it when it goes on if it zings and it has great warmth and import and it’s successful.”

— Rod Serling

60. “When I dig back through memory cells, I get one particularly distinctive feeling-and that’s one of warmth, comfort and well-being. For whatever else I may have had, or lost, or will find-I’ve still got a hometown. This, nobody’s gonna take away from me.”

— Rod Serling

61. “I guess Requiem for a Heavyweight as old as it is was as honest a piece as I’ve ever done.”

— Rod Serling

62. “You gotta BELIEVE, Bolie!”

— Rod Serling

63. “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

64. “As he looked at his reflection in the dresser mirror, he felt that recurring surprise that the tall, attractive man staring back was he, and beyond that was the wonder that the image bore no real relationship to the man himself.”

— Rod Serling

65. “I’m afraid that if I started to ponder who I am and what I am, I might not like what I find.”

— Rod Serling

66. “Infinitely more taboos, on television.”

— Rod Serling

67. “And what I further don’t understand is how little you appreciate the nature of your departure. Think of all the poor souls who go in violent accidents. These are the nonprecognition victim. We are not permitted to forewarn them. You, Mr. Bookman, fall into the category of natural causes.”

— Rod Serling

68. “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

69. “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.”

— Rod Serling

70. “I don’t feel, God dictated that I should write.”

— Rod Serling

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

— Rod Serling

72. “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

73. “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

74. “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.”

— Rod Serling

75. “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.”

— Rod Serling

76. “There are a lot I’m proud of, and a lot I wish the hell I’d never written.”

— Rod Serling

77. “You see, we can feed the stomach with concentrates, we can supply microfilm for reading, recreation, even movies of a sort, we can pump oxygen in, and waste material out, but there’s one thing we can’t simulate. That’s a very basic need. Man’s hunger for companionship. The barrier of loneliness, that’s one thing we haven’t licked yet.”

— Rod Serling

78. “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.”

— Rod Serling

79. “If it sounds good as you say it, likely as not it’ll sound good when an actor’s saying it.”

— Rod Serling

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

— Rod Serling

81. “There are millions of ways to not be writing. You say you’re not in the mood, you’ll pick it up tomorrow.”

— Rod Serling

82. “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.”

— Rod Serling

83. “If you need drugs to be a good writer, you are not a good writer.”

— Rod Serling

84. “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

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

— Rod Serling

86. “Just drawing back and drawing in; becoming narcissistic.”

— Rod Serling

87. “Personally, my daughter’s wedding gave me a tremendous pleasure.”

— Rod Serling

88. “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.”

— Rod Serling

89. “All the Dachaus must remain standing.”

— Rod Serling

90. “Beasley was a little man whose face looked like an X ray of an ulcer.”

— Rod Serling

91. “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.”

— Rod Serling

92. “I think the essence of the argument has always been, first of all, the Guild doesn’t want writing on spec. And that’s been a major problem over the years. But obviously, to the young writer that’s unfair and it’s discriminatory, and it can be very hurtful to one’s career.”

— Rod Serling

93. “And something inside the young man cracked. The small compartment in the back of his mind, where man closets his fears, ties them up, controls and commands them, broke open and they surged across brain and nerves and muscles – a nightmare flood in open rebellion.”

— Rod Serling

94. “I only wanted to tell you that this was the wonderful time for you. Don’t let any of it go by without enjoying it. There won’t be any more merry-go-rounds. No more cotton candy. No more band concerts. I only wanted to tell you, Martin, that this is the wonderful time. Now! Here! That’s all. That’s all I wanted to tell you.”

— Rod Serling

95. “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

96. “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.”

— Rod Serling

97. “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

98. “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

99. “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.”

— Rod Serling

100. “I would guess that the price of the script really is secondary. The credit is much more the essence.”

— Rod Serling