“Given the chance, what young girl wouldn’t happily exchange a plain face for a lovely one? What girl could refuse the opportunity to be beautiful? For want of a better estimate, let’s call it the year 2000. At any rate, imagine a time in the future when science has developed a means of giving everyone the face and body he dreams of. It may not happen tomorrow — but it happens now, in the Twilight Zone.”
-Rod Serling, “Number 12 Looks Just Like You”, The Twilight Zone
“The process of writing cannot be juggled with another occupation. The job of creating cannot be compartmentalized with certain hours devoted to one kind of creation and other hours set aside for still another. Writing is a demanding profession and a selfish one. And because it is selfish and demanding, because it is compulsive and exacting, I didn’t embrace it. I succumbed to it.”
“Of course, we all know dolls can’t really talk, and they certainly can’t commit murder. But to a child caught in the middle of turmoil and conflict, a doll can become many things: friend, defender, guardian. Especially a doll like Talky Tina, who did talk and did commit murder, in the misty region of the Twilight Zone.”
-Rod Serling, “Living Doll”, The Twilight Zone
“Apparently on the screen I look tall, ageless, and damned close to omniscient—delivering jeopardy-laden warnings through gritted teeth. But when people see me on the street, they say ‘by God, this kid is 5 foot 5, he’s got a broken nose, and looks about as foreboding as a bank teller on a lunch break.”
-Rod Serling (1963)
“You’re looking at a species of flimsy little two-legged animals with extremely small heads whose name is Man…Very tiny undeveloped brain; comes from primitive planet named Earth. Calls himself ‘Samuel Conrad’. And he will remain here in his cage with the running water and the electricity and the central heat- as long as he lives. Samuel Conrad has found the Twilight Zone.”
-Rod Serling, “People Are Alike All Over”, The Twilight Zone
“The writer’s role is to menace the public’s conscience. He must have a position, a point of view. He must see the arts as a vehicle for social criticism and he must focus on the issues of his time.”
-Rod Serling (1957, via corbis)
“Millicent Barnes, aged 25. A young woman waiting for a bus on a rainy November night. Not a very imaginative type is Miss Barnes, not given to undue anxiety or fears or, for that matter, even the most temporal flights of fancy. Like most young career woman, she has a generic classification as a, quote, “girl with a head on her shoulders,” end of quote; all of which is mentioned now because in just a moment, the head on Miss Barnes’ shoulders will be put to a test. Circumstances will assault her sense of reality and a chain of nightmares will put her sanity on a block.
Millicent Barnes, who in one minute will wonder if she is going mad.”
-Rod Serling, “Mirror Image”, 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)
