The Twilight Zone (1959) quotes

A word to the wise now to any and all who might suddenly feel the presence of a cigar-smoking helpmate who takes bankbooks out of thin air. If you're suddenly aware of any such celestial aids, it means that you're under the beneficent care of one Harmon Cavender, guardian angel. And this meesage from the Twilight Zone: lotsa luck!

Professor Ellis Fowler, a gentle, bookish guide to the young, who is about to discover that life still has certain surprises, and that the Rock Springs School for Boys lies on a direct path to another institution, commonly referred to as the Twilight Zone.

Professor Ellis Fowler, teacher, who discovered rather belatedly something of his own value. A very small scholastic lesson, from the campus of the Twilight Zone.

What you have just witnessed could be the end of a particularly terrifying nightmare. It isn't - it's the beginning. Although Alan Talbot doesn't know it, he is about to enter a strange new world, too incredible to be real, too real to be a dream. It's called the Twilight Zone.

In a way, it can be said that Walter Ryder succeeded in his life's ambition, even though the man he created was, after all, himself. There may be easier ways to self-improvement, but sometimes it happens that the shortest distance between two points is a crooked line - through the Twilight Zone.

Incident one hundred miles off the coast of Guadalacanal. Time: the present. The United States naval destroyer on what has been a most uneventful cruise. In a moment, they're going to send a man down thirty fathoms to check on a noise maker--someone or something tapping on metal. You may or may not read the results in a naval report, because Captain Beecham and his crew have just set a course that will lead this ship and everyone on it into the Twilight Zone.

Small naval engagement, the month of April, 1963. Not to be found in any historical annals. Look for this one file under 'H' for haunting--in the Twilight Zone.

You've seen them. Little towns, tucked away far from the main roads. You've seen them, but have you thought about them? What do the people in these places do? Why do the stay? Philip Redfield never thought about them. If his dog hadn't gone after that cat, he would have driven through Peaceful Valley and put it out of his mind forever. But he can't do that now, because whether he knows it or not his friend's shortcut has led him right into the capital of the Twilight Zone.

You've seen them. Little towns, tucked away far from the main roads. You've seen them, but have you thought about them? Have you wondered what the people do in such places, why they stay? Philip Redfield thinks about them now and he wonders, but only very late at night, when he's between wakefulness and sleep--in the Twilight Zone.

Rod Serling

Portrait of a bush-league Führer named Peter Vollmer, a sparse little man who feeds off his self-delusions and finds himself perpetually hungry for want of greatness in his diet. And like some goose-stepping predecessors he searches for something to explain his hunger, and to rationalize why a world passes him by without saluting. The something he looks for and finds is in a sewer. In his own twisted and distorted lexicon he calls it faith, strength, truth. But in just a moment Peter Vollmer will ply his trade on another kind of corner, a strange intersection in a shadowland called the Twilight Zone.

He attacked you, Mr. Vollmer! He tore you to pieces! Your voice is that of a lion, but your instincts are those of a rabbit!

Peter Vollmer

And you...What are you? You direct traffic from the darkness! You plan the battles but you're never there when they're fought! Why don't you come into the light? Why don't you step out here alongside of me? Why don't you give me a name, and a face, and a reason WHY!?

Mr. Vollmer! I was making speeches before you could read them! I was fighting battles when your only struggle was to climb out of a womb! I was taking over the world when your universe was a crib! And as for being in darkness, Mr. Vollmer...I invented darkness! [steps into the light, revealing that he is Adolf Hitler]

Peter

You… you picked me! You picked me!

I did not pick you, Mr. Vollmer; you picked me! You chose my ideas, you invoked my name, you stole my slogans. So now, you must take whatever else comes with it. In the past, I have given you suggestions! Now, I give orders!!

What did you kill just now? A man?

Peter Vollmer

No, not a man. A disease, one which had to be cured.

Indeed. And so, how did it feel to cure this disease?

Peter Vollmer

It felt like I was immortal.

Mr. Vollmer!! WE ARE IMMORTAL!!

Rod Serling

Where will he go next, this phantom from another time, this resurrected ghost of a previous nightmare— Chicago; Los Angeles; Miami, Florida; Vincennes, Indiana; Syracuse, New York? Anyplace, everyplace, where there's hate, where there's prejudice, where there's bigotry. He's alive. He's alive so long as these evils exist. Remember that when he comes to your town. Remember it when you hear his voice speaking out through others. Remember it when you hear a name called, a minority attacked, any blind, unreasoning assault on a people or any human being. He's alive because through these things we keep him alive.

Rod Serling

What you're witnessing is the curtain-raiser to a most extraordinary play; to wit, the signing of a pact, the commencement of a project. The play itself will be performed almost entirely offstage. The final scenes are to be enacted a decade hence and with a different cast. The main character of these final scenes is Ilse, the daughter of Professor and Mrs. Nielsen, age two. At the moment she lies sleeping in her crib, unaware of the singular drama in which she is to be involved. Ten years from this moment, Ilse Nielsen is to know the desolating terror of living simultaneously in the world--and in the Twilight Zone.