The Twilight Zone (1959) quotes

204 total quotes



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Adam: Well, Jiggs, don't you think that all of this is just a little bit too much the way it should be?
Jiggs: I don't get you.
Adam: Well, I mean it's so pat. I got tried and sentenced the same day. It doesn't work like that! But you see, that's the way that I saw it in my mind, and so that's the way it is! Or you take this place here, you and Coley and his harmonica or Phillips and his mother. It's like a movie. Real death houses aren't like that, but you see I've never been in a real death house, so that's my impression of it!
Paul: Fifteen more minutes. That's another thing. Why does this always happen around midnight?
Henry: Because that's when it happens!
Paul: Yeah, but why?
Henry: You tell me why.
Paul: According to Grant, he doesn't know anything about these matters except what he sees in the movies, and in the movies it always happens at midnight.
Henry: Because movies are technically accurate.
Paul: Yeah, that's strange too when you come to think of it.

David Ellington: Honest men make unconvincing liars!

Hayley: Didn't you go out on that bus?
Mr Ross: I did, indeed. That bridge wasn't safe. It collapsed. The state police car, the bus, kerplunk. Right into the river. It was a terrible scene. No one got out.
Hayley: Except you
Mr Ross: Except me. Lucky,I guess, huh?
Hayley: Very lucky but...
Mr Ross: But what?
Hayley: You're not even wet.
Mr Ross: Wet? What is wet?
Hayley: What do you mean what is wet? You fell in the river but you're clothes are all dry.
Mr Ross: An illusion, that's all. Like that jukebox playing in the corner, that's an illusion too. [The Jukebox stops playing] or that phone ringing. [A Phone starts ringing,then stops] That's an illusion. Just a parlor trick.
Hayley: What are you,some kind of magician?
Mr Ross: Oh hardly. [A third arm comes out of his jacket and lights a Cigarette] Now before you faint dead away,I think I should tell you my name isn't really Ross and I wasn't really going to Boston. No, I was sent as sort of an advance scout. You know, these cigarettes, do you call them? They taste wonderful. We haven't got a thing like this on Mars. That's incidentally where I come from. We're beginning to colonize. My friends will be arriving shortly. I think they're going to like it here. It's a lovely area. So remote and off the beaten track. Just the perfect place to set up a colony, don't you think? Now while we're waiting, how about some of what you call music.
...
Hayley: Oh I don't mind. You see, Mr Ross, my name isn't really Hayley. And I do agree with you, this is an extraordinary place to colonize. We folks on Venus had the same idea. We got it several years ago. And I think I should tell you now, your friends aren't coming. They've been intercepted. Oh, a colony is coming. But it's from Venus. And if you're still alive, I think you'll see how we differ. [We takes off his hat,revealing a third eye] And I agree with you about what they call music. Why don't you play some?

Janet: It's pretty bad, isn't it? I know it's pretty bad. Ever since I can remember... ever since I was a little girl...people have turned away from me. The very first thing I can remember is a little child screaming when she looked at me. I never wanted to be beautiful. I never wanted to look like a painting. I never even wanted to be loved. I just wanted... I just wanted people not to scream when they looked at me.

Leader: I say to you now...I say to you now that there is no such thing as a permissive society, because such a society cannot exist! They will scream at you and rant and rave and conjure up some dead and decadent picture of an ancient time when they said that all men are created equal! But to them equality was an equality of opportunity, an equality of status, an equality of aspiration! And then, in what must surely be the pinnacle of insanity, the absolute in inconsistency, they would have had us believe that this equality did not apply to form, to creed. They permitted a polyglot, accident-bred, mongrel-like mass of diversification to blanket the earth, to infiltrate and weaken! Well, we know now that there must be a single purpose! A single norm! A single approach! A single entity of peoples! A single virtue! A single morality! A single frame of reference! A single philosophy of government! We cannot permit... we must not permit the encroaching sentimentality of a past age to weaken our resolve. We must cut out all that is different like a cancerous growth! It is essential in this society that we not only have a norm, but that we conform to that norm. Differences weaken us. Variations destroy us. An incredible permissiveness to deviation from this norm is what has ended nations and brought them to their knees. Conformity we must worship and hold sacred. Conformity is the key to survival.

Narrator: A brief if frenetic introduction to Mr. Archibald Beechcroft, a child of the twentieth century, a product of the population explosion, and one of the inheritors of the legacy of progress. Mr. Beechcroft again. This time act two of his daily battle for survival. And in just a moment, our hero will begin his personal one-man rebellion against the mechanics of his age, and to do so he will enlist certain aids available only in the Twilight Zone.

Narrator: A Global jet airliner, en route from London to New York on an uneventful afternoon in the year 1961, but now reported overdue and missing, and by now searched for on land, sea, and air by anguished human beings fearful of what they'll find. But you and I know where she is, you and I know what's happened. So if some moment, any moment, you hear the sound of jet engines flying atop the overcast, engines that sound searching and lost, engines that sound desperate, shoot up a flare or do something. That would be Global 33 trying to get home from the Twilight Zone.

Narrator: A hotel suite that in this instance serves as a den of crime, the aftermath of a rather minor event to be noted on a police blotter, an insurance claim, perhaps a three-inch box on page twelve of the evening paper. Small addenda to be added to the list of the loot: a camera, a most unimposing addition to the flotsam and jetsam that it came with, hardly worth mentioning really, because cameras are cameras, some expensive, some purchasable at five-and-dime stores. But this camera, this one's unusual, because in just a moment we'll watch it inject itself into the destinies of three people. It happens to be a fact that the pictures that it takes can only be developed in the Twilight Zone.

Narrator: A toy telephone, an act of faith, a set of improbable circumstances, all combine to probe a mystery, to fathom a depth, to send a facet of light into a dark after-region, to be believed or disbelieved depending on your frame of reference. A fact or a fantasy, a substance or a shadow, but all of it very much a part of the Twilight Zone.

Narrator: A word to the wise now to the garbage collectors of the world, to the curio seekers, to the antique buffs, to everyone who would try to coax out a miracle from unlikely places. Check that bottle you're taking back for a two-cent deposit. The genie you save might be your own. Case in point, Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Castle, fresh from the briefest of trips into the Twilight Zone.

Narrator: A word to the wise to all the children of the twentieth century, whether their concern be pediatrics or geriatrics, whether they crawl on hands and knees and wear diapers or walk with a cane and comb their beards. There's a wondrous magic to Christmas, and there's a special power reserved for little people. In short, there's nothing mightier than the meek.

Narrator: Ancient folk saying: 'You can catch the Devil, but you can't hold him long.' Ask Brother Jerome. Ask David Ellington. They know, and they'll go on knowing to the end of their days and beyond--in the Twilight Zone.

Narrator: Around and around she goes, and where she stops nobody knows. All Ed Lindsay knows is that he desperately wanted a second chase and he finally got it, through a strange and wonderful time machine called a radio...in the Twilight Zone.

Narrator: As must be obvious, this is a house hovered over by Mr. Death, that omnipresent player to the third and final act of every life. And it's been said, and probably rightfully so, that what follows this life is one of the unfathomable mysteries, an area of darkness which we the living reserve for the dead - or so it is said. For in a moment, a child will try to cross that bridge which separates light and shadow, and of course he must take the only known route, that indistinct highway through the region we call the Twilight Zone.

Narrator: Couldn't happen, you say? Far-fetched? Way-out? Tilt-of-center? Possible, but the next time you buy an automobile, if it happens to look as if it had just gone through the Battle of the Marne, and the seller is ready to throw into the bargain one of his arms, be particularly careful in explaining to the boss about your grandmother's funeral when you were actually at Chavez Ravine watching the Dodgers. It'll be a fact that you are the proud possessor of an instrument of truth manufactured and distributed by an exclusive dealer in the Twilight Zone.