The Twilight Zone: The Original Stories Quotes

″‘I’ve read the first paragraph of that book,’ he said. ‘Why do you suppose I haven’t slept for a week?’ I said, ‘Well?’ and he smiled a curious, twisted smile. ‘It’s a cookbook,’ he said.”

″‘Where are you?’ he asked. ‘I want to talk to you.’ Claws of ice clamped down on Miss Keene’s shuddering chest. She lay petrified, unable to cut off the sound of the man’s dull expressionless voice, asking, Where are you? I want to talk to you.‘”

″‘I know. It’s funny; when he came in, I told him to sit down. He did. And in less than two seconds he was asleep. Then he gave that yell you heard and . . .’ ‘Heart attack?’ ‘Yes.’ The psychiatrist rubbed his cheek thoughtfully, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I guess there are worse ways to go. At least he died peacefully.‘”

“He eyes were open several seconds before the alarm was supposed to go off. Beside him, his wife touched his arm. He knew what she was going to say. ‘Are we still going?’ she asked.”

“He bent down, clawing blindly and found, finally, their smashed remains. A minor, indirect destruction stemming from the sudden, wholesale smashing of a city. But the only one that greatly interested Henry Bemis. He stared down at the blurred page before him. He began to cry.”

“Poor Henry literally couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. For a while, when he was very young, his parents had thought him an idiot. [...] He was never quite able to catch up. There was never enough time. ”

“For a long time, Henry Bemis had had an ambition. to read a book. Not just the title or the preface, or a page somewhere in the middle. He wanted to read the whole thing, all the way through from beginning to end. A simple ambition perhaps, but in the cluttered life of Henry Bemis, an impossibility.”

“There is nothing in the world that man won’t do for his brother. If, that is, brother doesn’t want anything done...”

“Wilson felt the pleasure of amusement. Whoever spoke was wrong, of course - as would be established soon enough when the engine was examined and they checked his wound more closely. Then they’d realize that he’d saved them all.”

“Impulsively, Wilson drew aside the curtain. He did not know, immediately, if he would survive. [...] Imprisoned in this swollen mass, his heart pulsed strickenly, threatening to burst its case as Wilson sat, paralyzed. Only inches away, separated from him by the thickness of a piece of glass, the man was staring at him.”

“At the bottom of the steps she stands waiting, with a smile of ineffable joy, an attitude of matchless grace and dignity. [...] As he is about to clasp her he feels a stunning blow upon the back of the neck; a blinding white light blazes all about him with a sound like a the shock of a cannon - then all is darkness and silence!”

“As Peyton Fahrquhar fell straight downward through the bridge he lost consciousness and was as one already dead. From this state he was awakened - ages later, it seemed to him - by a sharp pressure upon his throat, followed by a sense of suffocation.”

″-my people are on another. There is room in this world for both ways. But your failure to grasp this simple fact has killed many of us and it will kill many more of you. For we have been on our path longer.”

“He followed the ancient shaman, dumbly, not having the slightest idea why he was doing so, to a square of moist soil. It was surrounded by natives.”

“The Kanamit were not very pretty, it’s true. They looked something like pigs and something like people, and that is not an attractive combination. Seeing them for the first time shocked you; that was their handicap.”

″‘Whoever she is,’ Hall went on, ‘she’ll push me. And I’ll fall. Hundreds of feet.’ [...] ‘Mr. Hall, this is my receptionist, Miss Thomas.’ ‘No,’ Hall cried. ‘It’s her. It is. And I know who she is now, God save me! I know who she is!‘”

“When you are very old and gone childish-small again, with childish ways and childish yens and, in need of feeding, make a wish for the old teacher nurse, the dumb yet wise companion, send for me. I will come back. We shall inhabit the nursery again, never fear.”

“Her pale blue eyes shuttled around, right and left, to see if Anthony was in sight. Not that it would make any difference if he was or wasn’t- he didn’t have to be near you to know what you were thinking. usually, though, unless he had his attention on somebody, he would be occupied with thoughts of his own. But some things attracted his attention--you could never be sure just what. ‘This weather’s just fine,’ Mom said. Lollop.”

“Whatever you do, don’t die. Your children will never forgive you.... So your mother ran away to death. And after that, how could you trust anyone.”

“The two families rode in silence through the deserted streets to the field he warned, ‘Remember not a word from any of you.’ The guard recognized him as the chief test pilot for the new spaceship. ‘My family and some friends are coming down to watch me take off,’ he told the guard.”