The Twilight Zone (1959) Season 1 quotes

The place is here, the time is now, and the journey into the shadows that we're about to watch could be our journey.

Up there, up there in the vastness of space, in the void that is sky, up there is an enemy known as isolation. It sits there in the stars waiting, waiting with the patience of eons, forever waiting... in the Twilight Zone.

And now, the final offer. My very best. What I now present has never been sold any where else in these entirety of the world. I offer...one servant, for all eternity. One man, to travel with you along the cosmos, to entice, to assist in whatever way I can. Because you see, my good sir...I offer you...

Why...it's midnight! It's past midnight and I've missed my appointment!

You realize, of course, that you've reached the terms of our deal.

That's right.

...But it was pretty great, wasn't it?

Yes, it was, Mr. Bookman. One for the angels.

That's right. One for the angels.

Now, come along.

All right, all right. I'm ready...wait.

You never know who may need something up there. Hm? Up there?

Up there, Mr. Bookman. You made it.

Rod Serling

Street scene. Summer. The present. Man on a sidewalk named Lew Bookman, age sixtyish. Occupation: pitchman. Lew Bookman, a fixture of the summer. A rather minor component to a hot July. A nondescript, commonplace little man whose life is a treadmill built out of sidewalks. In just a moment Lew Bookman will have to concern himself with survival. Because as of three-o-clock this hot July afternoon, he'll be stalked by...Mr. Death.

Rod Serling

Lewis J. Bookman, age sixtyish. Occupation: pitchman. Formerly a fixture of the summer. Formerly a rather minor component to a hot July. But throughout his life, a man beloved by the children...and therefore a most important man. Couldn't happen you say? Probably not in most places, but it did happen...in the Twilight Zone.

Portrait of a town drunk named Al Denton. This is a man who's begun his dying early - a long, agonizing route through a maze of bottles. Al Denton, who would probably give an arm or a leg or a part of his soul to have another chance, to be able to rise up and shake the dirt from his body and the bad dreams that infest his consciousness. In the parlance of the times, this is a peddler, a rather fanciful-looking little man in a black frock coat. And this is the third principal character of our story. Its function: perhaps to give Mr. Al Denton his second chance.

Mr. Henry Fate, dealer in utensils and pots and pans, liniments and potions. A fanciful little man in a black frock coat who can help a man climbing out of a pit - or another man from falling into one. Because, you see, fate can work that way in the Twilight Zone.

Picture of a woman looking at a picture. Movie great of another time, once-brilliant star in a firmament no longer a part of the sky, eclipsed by the movement of earth and time. Barbara Jean Trenton, whose world is a projection room, whose dreams are made out of celluloid. Barbara Jean Trenton, struck down by hit-and-run years and lying on the unhappy pavement, trying desperately to get the license number of fleeting fame.

To the wishes that come true, to the strange, mystic strength of the human animal, who can take a wishful dream and give it a dimension of its own. To Barbara Jean Trenton, movie queen of another era, who has changed the blank tomb of an empty projection screen into a private world. It can happen in the Twilight Zone.

[to his younger self] Martin, I only wanted to tell you that this is a wonderful time of life for you. Don't let any of it go by without enjoying it. There won't be any more merry-go-rounds, no more cotton candy, no more band concerts. I only wanted to tell you that this is a wonderful time for you. Now. Here. That's all, Martin. That's all I wanted to tell you. God help me. That's all I wanted to tell you.

Martin Sloan, age thirty-six, vice-president in charge of media. Successful in most things but not in the one effort that all men try at some time in their lives - trying to go home again. And also like all men perhaps there'll be an occasion, maybe a summer night sometime, when he'll look up from what he's doing and listen to the distant music of a calliope, and hear the voices and the laughter of the people and the places of his past. And perhaps across his mind there'll flit a little errant wish, that a man might not have to become old, never outgrow the parks and the merry-go-rounds of his youth. And he'll smile then too because he'll know it is just an errant wish, some wisp of memory not too important really, some laughing ghosts that cross a man's mind, that are a part of the Twilight Zone.

Rod Serling

Martin Sloane, age thirty-six. Occupation: vice president, ad agency, in charge of media. This is not just a Sunday drive for Martin Sloane. He perhaps doesn't know it at the time, but it's an exodus. Somewhere up the road, he's looking for sanity. And somewhere up the road, he'll find something else.

Rod Serling

A man can think a lot of thoughts and walk a lot of pavements between afternoon and night. And to a man like Martin Sloane, 'til memory has suddenly become reality, a resolve can come just as clearly and inexorably as stars in the summer night. Martin Sloane is now back in time... and his resolve is to put in a claim... to the past.

You're about to meet a hypochondriac. Witness Mr. Walter Bedeker, age forty-four, afraid of the following: death, disease, other people, germs, draft, and everything else. He has one interest in life, and that's Walter Bedeker. One preoccupation: the life and well-being of Walter Bedeker. One abiding concern about society: that if Walter Bedeker should die, how will it survive without him?