I guess Requiem for a Heavyweight as old as it is was as honest a piece as I’ve ever done.
Why do I write? I guess that’s been asked of every writer. I don’t know. It isn’t any massive compulsion.
Personally, my daughter’s wedding gave me a tremendous pleasure.
You can become much more independent, much more courageous with a bank account. And also, much more independent and self-reliant when you know you have money behind you.
I don’t have any system. I dictate a lot, through a machine, and I also have a secretary. But I used to type just like everybody else.
There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man... a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination.
All the Dachaus must remain standing. The Dachaus, the Belsens, the Buchenwalds, the Auschwitzes -all of them. They must remain standing because they are a monument to a moment in time when some men decided to turn the earth into a graveyard, into it they shoveled all of their reason, their logic, their knowledge, but worst of all their conscience. And the moment we forget this, the moment we cease to be haunted by its rememberance. Then we become the grave diggers.
If you write, fix pipes, grade papers, lay bricks or drive a taxi – do it with a sense of pride. And do it the best you know how. Be cognizant and sympathetic to the guy alongside, because he wants a place in the sun, too. And always... always look past his color, his creed, his religion and the shape of his ears. Look for the whole person. Judge him as the whole person.
A sickness known as hate; not a virus, not a microbe, not a germ – but a sickness nonetheless, highly contagious, deadly in its effects. Don’t look for it in the Twilight Zone – look for it in a mirror. Look for it before the light goes out altogether.
I don’t think playing it safe constitutes a retreat, necessarily. In other words, I don’t think if, by playing safe he means we are not going to delve into controversy, then if that’s what he means he’s quite right. I’m not going to delve into controversy. Somebody asked me the other day if this means that I’m going to be a meek conformist, and my answer is no. I’m just acting the role of a tired non-conformist.
As long as they talk about you, you’re not really dead, as long as they speak your name, you continue. A legend doesn’t die, just because the man dies.
You see, we can feed the stomach with concentrates, we can supply microfilm for reading, recreation, even movies of a sort, we can pump oxygen in, and waste material out, but there’s one thing we can’t simulate. That’s a very basic need. Man’s hunger for companionship. The barrier of loneliness, that’s one thing we haven’t licked yet.
I only wanted to tell you that this was the wonderful time 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, Martin, that this is the wonderful time. Now! Here! That’s all. That’s all I wanted to tell you.
You gotta BELIEVE, Bolie!
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.
Never make the mistake of assuming the audience is any less intelligent than you are.
Trying to be the best at anything carries its own special risks, in or out of the Twilight Zone.
And something inside the young man cracked. The small compartment in the back of his mind, where man closets his fears, ties them up, controls and commands them, broke open and they surged across brain and nerves and muscles – a nightmare flood in open rebellion.
And what I further don’t understand is how little you appreciate the nature of your departure. Think of all the poor souls who go in violent accidents. These are the nonprecognition victim. We are not permitted to forewarn them. You, Mr. Bookman, fall into the category of natural causes.
As he looked at his reflection in the dresser mirror, he felt that recurring surprise that the tall, attractive man staring back was he, and beyond that was the wonder that the image bore no real relationship to the man himself.
No audience likes a writer’s opinion thrust down their gullet as simply a tract. It has to be dramatized and made acceptably palatable within a dramatic form.