The Twilight Zone (1959) quotes

Rod Serling

Respectfully submitted for your perusal – a Kanamit. Height: a little over nine feet. Weight: in the neighborhood of three hundred and fifty pounds. Origin: unknown. Motives? Therein hangs the tale, for in just a moment, we're going to ask you to shake hands, figuratively, with a Christopher Columbus from another galaxy and another time. This is the Twilight Zone.

It's been said that science fiction and fantasy are two different things: science fiction the improbable made possible; fantasy, the impossible made probable. What would you have if you put these two different things together? Well, you'd have an old man named Ben who knows a lot of tricks most people don't know and a little girl named Jenny who loves him, and a journey into the heart of the Twilight Zone.

Mrs. Gann will be in for a big surprise when she finds this under Jenny's pillow, because Mrs. Gann has more temper than imagination. She'll never dream that this is a picture of Old Ben as he really looks, and it will never occur to her that eventually her niece will grow up to be an honest-to-goodness queen, somewhere in the Twilight Zone.

Missing: one frightened little girl. Name: Bettina Miller. Description: six years of age, average height and build, light brown hair, quite pretty. Last seen being tucked into bed by her mother a few hours ago. Last heard--aye, there's the rub, as Hamlet put it. For Bettina Miller can be heard quite clearly, despite the rather curious fact that she can't be seen at all. Present location? Let's say for the moment--in the Twilight Zone.

What is it?

Bill

The opening.

To what?

Bill

I think... to another dimension.

What happened?

Bill

I pulled you out. Half of you was still here.

You mean to say you had a hold of me all this time?

Bill

That's right.

Oh, Bill. You know I didn't even feel you? Say, listen, why didn't you want me to reach in there?

Bill

And how come I kept telling you to hurry?

Yeah.

Bill

[bangs on the wall four times] That's why. It was closing up all the time you were in there. Another few seconds and half of you would've been here and the other half...

Rod Serling

The other half where? The fourth dimension? The fifth? Perhaps. They never found the answer. Despite a battery of research physicists equipped with every device known to man, electronic and otherwise, no result was ever achieved, except perhaps a little more respect for and uncertainty about the mechanisms of the Twilight Zone.

Rod Serling

Cameo of a man who has just lost his most valuable possession. He doesn't know about the loss, yet. In fact, he doesn't even know about the possession. Because, like most people, David Gurney has never really thought about the matter of his identity. But he's going to be thinking a great deal about it from now on, because that is what he's lost. And his search for it is going to take him into the darkest corners - of The Twilight Zone.

Rod Serling

A case of mistaken identity or a nightmare turned inside out? A simple loss of memory or the end of the world? David Gurney may never find the answer, but you can be sure he's looking for it - in the Twilight Zone.

[Showing Fletcher the statue of him] The little people did that. They did it overnight.

What do you give them in return, Craig?

I won't tramp my feet down... on their town.

Whoever invented this stuff must have had stomach trouble; no compassion for his fellow man or his fellow man's bowels! Well, there may come a moment in time when I'll enjoy this.

There may come a moment in time when you'll lick your own foot, as if it were the drumstick of a Thanksgiving turkey! But until it does come to that, buddy, you'll eat what is prescribed to eat! And if you've got tears to shed, you save them for bedtime and weep them into your pillow; don't spray them all over me! It's a waste of time, and it's a waste of effort; it's also dull, and it's tough to live with! Is that clear, Craig?

Loud, and...

Then dwell on it! And while you're dwelling on it, you might count a few blessings. We don't have much food or water, that's a fact. But we landed in a place where there's oxygen, and we can survive. Plus, we walked away from that crash with hardly a bone out of place. Now, the standing order is as follows: you got any deep-rooted complaints, you jot them down in the ship's log; don't bother me with them! Now, is THAT clear?

Still loud and, COMMANDER.

Rod Serling

The time is the space age. The place is a barren landscape of a rock-walled canyon that lies millions of miles from the planet Earth. The cast of characters, you've met them: William Fletcher, commander of the spaceship, his co-pilot Peter Craig. The other characters who inhabit this place, you may never see, but they're there, as these two gentlemen will soon find out because they're about to partake in a little exploration into that gray, shaded area in space and time that's known as the Twilight Zone.

Rod Serling

The case of navigator Peter Craig, a victim of a delusion. In this case, the dream dies a little harder than the man. A small exercise in space psychology that you can try on for size in the Twilight Zone.

Four o' clock, Pete. That's when we'll make it occur. We'll make it occur at four o'clock. At that moment, at that precise moment, we shall...destroy evil. This is both my charge and my obligation, Pete: to destroy evil. And we shall do it at four o'clock. I'm not quite sure of the method yet, but that will come to me. It will come to me assuredly and it will be...a revelation. It will be the exploration of immorality, the exordium of the end. Four o'clock, Pete. That's when we'll make it happen, Pete, whatever form I choose. Four o'clock.

Rod Serling

That's Oliver Crangle, a dealer in petulance and poison. He's rather arbitrarily chosen four o'clock as his personal Gotterdammerung, and we are about to watch the metamorphosis of a twisted fanatic, poisoned by the gangrene of prejudice, to the status of avenging angel, upright and omniscient, dedicated and fearsome. Whatever your clocks say, it's four o'clock - and wherever you are, it happens to be the Twilight Zone.

Rod Serling

At four o'clock, an evil man made his bed and lay in it, a pot called a kettle black, a stone-thrower broke the windows of his glass house. You look for this one under 'F' for fanatic and 'J' for justice - in The Twilight Zone.

The reluctant gentleman with the sizeable mouth is Mr. Frisby. He has all the drive of a broken camshaft and the aggressive vinegar of a corpse. As you've no doubt gathered, his big stock in trade is the tall tale. Now, what he doesn't know is that the visitors out front are a very special breed, destined to change his life beyond anything even his fertile imagination could manufacture. The place is Pitchville Flats, the time is the present. But Mr. Frisby's on the first leg of a rather fanciful journey into the place we call the Twilight Zone.