“On a microscopic piece of sand that floats through space is a fragment of a man’s life. Left to rust is the place he lived in and the machines he used. Without use, they will disintegrate from the wind and the sand and the years that act upon them. All of Mr. Corry’s machines - including the one made in his image, kept alive by love, but now obsolete - in the Twilight Zone.”

-Rod Serling, “The Lonely”, The Twilight Zone (1959)

It’s that time again - ride out your hangover with the New Year’s Eve/Day Syfy TZ marathon (schedule here)

“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 (1975, via)

(Syfy’s July 4th Twilight Zone marathon schedule here)

“The hand belongs to Mr. Don S. Carter, male member of a honeymoon team on route across the Ohio countryside to New York City. In one moment, they will be subjected to a gift most humans never receive in a lifetime. For one penny, they will be able to look into the future.

The time is now, the place is a little diner in Ridgeview, Ohio, and what this young couple doesn’t realize is that this town happens to lie on the outskirts of the Twilight Zone.”

-Rod Serling, “Nick of Time”, The Twilight Zone 

“A scared, angry little man who never got a break. Now he has everything he’s ever wanted - and he’s going to have to live with it for eternity… in the Twilight Zone“ 

-Rod Serling, “A Nice Place to Visit”, The Twilight Zone

The Twilight Zone’s crew looks on as Rod Serling performs his on-camera narration for the episode Static (1961) (via)

“As I grow older, the urge to write gets less and less. I’ve pretty much spewed out everything I have to say, none of which has been particularly monumental. I’ve written articulate stuff, reasonably bright stuff over the years, but nothing that will stand the test of time. The good writing, like wine, has to age well with the years, and my stuff is momentarily adequate.”

-Serling, 1972 (via)

“Now the questions that come to mind. Where is this place and when is it? What kind of world where ugliness is the norm and beauty the deviation from that norm? You want an answer? The answer is, it doesn’t make any difference.

Because the old saying happens to be true: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, in this year or a hundred years hence, on this planet or wherever there is human life, perhaps out amongst the stars. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. A lesson to be learned— in The Twilight Zone.”

-Rod Serling, “Eye of the Beholder”, The Twilight Zone (1960)

“Wintry February night, the present. Order of events: a phone call from a frightened woman notating the arrival of an unidentified flying object, and the check-out you’ve just witnessed with two state troopers verifying the event, but with nothing more enlightening to add beyond evidence of some tracks leading across the highway to a diner.

You’ve heard of trying to find a needle in a haystack? Well, stay with us now and you’ll be a part of an investigating team whose mission is not to find that proverbial needle, no, their task is even harder. They’ve got to find a Martian in a diner, and in just a moment you’ll search with them, because you’ve just landed in the Twilight Zone.”

-Rod Serling, “Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?”, The Twilight Zone (1961)

“The chancellor, the late chancellor, was only partly correct. He was obsolete, but so is the State, the entity he worshipped. Any state, any entity, any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of man - that state is obsolete. A case to be filed under “M” for mankind—in the Twilight Zone.”

-Rod Serling, “The Obsolete Man”, The Twilight Zone

Burgess Meredith on the post-nuclear set of “Time Enough to Last” (1959)

“The best laid plans of mice and men and Henry Bemis, the small man in the glasses who wanted nothing but time. Henry Bemis, now just a part of a smashed landscape, just a piece of the rubble, just a fragment of what man has deeded to himself. Mr. Henry Bemis, in the Twilight Zone.”

-Rod Serling, “Time Enough at Last”, The Twilight Zone

“Exit one Paul Driscoll, a creature of the 20th century. He puts to a test a complicated theorum of space-time continuum, but he goes a step further—or tries to. Shortly, he will seek out three moments of the past in a desperate attempt to alter the present—one of the odd and fanciful functions in a shadowland known as …the Twilight Zone.”

-Rod Serling, “No Time Like the Past”, The Twilight Zone

“On a microscopic piece of sand that floats through space is a fragment of a man’s life. Left to rust is the place he lived in and the machines he used. Without use, they will disintegrate from the wind and the sand and the years that act upon them. All of Mr. Corry’s machines - including the one made in his image, kept alive by love, but now obsolete in the Twilight Zone.”

-Rod Serling, “The Lonely”, The Twilight Zone (1959)

“Down this hall is a very strange individual locked in a room. He’s known by various names and by various forms. Our story is called The Howling Man by Mr. Charles Beaumont. It’s designed for the young in heart, but the strong of nerve.

Mr. David Ellington, scholar, seeker of truth and, regrettably, finder of truth. A man who will shortly arise from his exhaustion to confront a problem that has tormented mankind since the beginning of time. A man who knocked on a door seeking sanctuary and found instead the outer edges of the Twilight Zone.”

-Rod Serling, “The Howling Man”, The Twilight Zone (1960)

Susan Harrison, Murray Matheson, and cameramen work on a close-up shot of “The Clown” in The Twilight Zone episode “Five Characters in Search of an Exit”.

(via Dimensions Behind the Twilight Zone)

“Clown, hobo, ballet dancer, bagpiper, and an army major - a collection of question marks. Five improbable entities stuck together into a pit of darkness. No logic, no reason, no explanation; just a prolonged nightmare in which fear, loneliness and the unexplainable walk hand in hand through the shadows.

In a moment we’ll start collecting clues as to the whys, the whats and the wheres. We will not end the nightmare, we’ll only explain it - because this is the Twilight Zone.”

-Rod Serling, “Five Characters in Search of an Exit”, The Twilight Zone (1961)