If there is anything that unites the whole of Serling’s works – whether it be short stories or film scripts, whether it be fantastic or mainstream – it is an abiding concern with human feeling. —“The Moral Supernatural” from The Evolution of the Weird Tale (2004) by S. T. Joshi (via midcenturymiskatonic)

They say a dream takes only a second or so, and yet in that second a man can live a lifetime. He can suffer and die, and who’s to say which is the greater reality: the one we know or the one in dreams, between heaven, the sky, the earth - in the Twilight Zone. —Rod Serling

To the wishes that come true, to the strange, mystic strength of the human animal, who can take a wishful dream and give it a dimension of its own. —Rod Serling

The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs, and explosions, and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices, to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy; and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own for the children, and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is, that these things cannot be confined to the Twilight Zone. —Rod Serling

Ideas come from the earth. They come from every human experience that you either witness or have heard about. Translated in your brain, in your own sense of dialogue, in your own language form. Ideas are born from what is smelled, heard, seen, experienced, felt, emotionalized. Ideas are probably in the air… Like little, tiny items of ozone. That’s the easiest thing on earth - to come up with an idea. Then the second thing is the hardest thing on earth - to put it down. —Rod Serling talks about Writing for Television

It’s death that gives meaning to life. People love a rose because they know it will soon be gone. Nobody ever loved a stone. —The Twilight Zone (via allmyambiguity)