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Richard Matheson
55 quotes
“You never know, he thought. You just never know. You drift along, year after year, presuming certain values to be fixed; like being able to drive on a public thoroughfare without somebody trying to murder you. You came to depend on that sort of thing. Then something occurs and all bets are off. One shocking incident and all the years of logic and acceptance are displaced and, suddenly, the jungle is in front of you again. Man, part animal, part angel. Where had he come across that phrase? He shivered. It was entirely an animal in that truck out there.”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) first seen 1971 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Duel", in Playboy (April 1971). Later adapted into the screenplay for Duel (1971), Steven Spielberg's first feature-length film
“Somewhere In Time is the story of a love which transcends time, What Dreams May Come is the story of a love which transcends death. ... I feel that they represent the best writing I have done in the novel form.”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) first seen 1998 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Introduction to an Omnibus edition of his work, as quoted in Somewhere in Time (1998), p. 318 - 319
“It is my conviction that basic Reality is not all that perplexing. What seems difficult to assimilate are the manifold details of Reality, not its fundamental elements.”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) first seen 1946 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Introduction to The Path (1999), based on ideas presented in Thinking and Destiny (1946) by Harold W. Percival, p. 11
“Our world is in profound danger. Mankind must establish a set of positive values with which to secure its own survival. This quest for enlightenment must begin now. It is essential that all men and women become aware of what they are, why they are here on Earth and what they must do to preserve civilization before it is too late.”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) first seen 1946 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Introduction to The Path (1999), based on ideas presented in Thinking and Destiny (1946) by Harold W. Percival, p. 12
“My wife and child and I were on a camping trip and we stopped in Virginia City. In the Opera House, I saw a photograph of Maude Adams, the famous American actress. It was such a great photograph that creatively I fell in love with her. What if some guy did the same thing and could go back in time?”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) first seen 1975 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On his initial inspiration for the novel Bid Time Return (1975), as quoted in "Behind the Scenes of Somewhere in Time (1980)
“I think What Dreams May Come is the most important (read effective) book I’ve written. It has caused a number of readers to lose their fear of death — the finest tribute any writer could receive. ... Somewhere In Time is my favorite novel.”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ed Gorman Calling: We Talk to Richard Matheson", in Filmfax magazine (2004). Online at MYSTERY*FILE: The Crime Fiction Research Journal (2006)
“I hate it when something I’ve had published "inspires" some nut to imitate what I’ve written, or some teacher gets fired for having her students read one of my stories or novels.”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ed Gorman Calling: We Talk to Richard Matheson" (2004)
“I hope people are reading my work in the future. I hope I have done more than frightened a couple of generations. I hope I’ve inspired a few people one way or another. Actually, the highlight of my life — which, of course, had an enormous influence on my writing career — was meeting Ruth Woodson on the beach in Santa Monica in 1951, falling in love with her, marrying her, and creating with her a family of four children; two sons, two daughters. My love for them, and growth because of them, made my writing life what it was. It’s a process I advocate for any would-be writer.”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ed Gorman Calling: We Talk to Richard Matheson" (2004)
“I think we’re yearning for something beyond the every day. And I will tell you that I don’t believe in the "supernatural," I believe in the "supernormal." To me there is nothing that goes against nature. If it seems incomprehensible, it’s because we haven’t been able to understand it yet.”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: When asked, "In your estimation, what does the supernatural genre tell us about ourselves as human beings?" in "He Is Legend", interview at Cinemaspy (2007); also quoted in [http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/06/2…
“I have come to the final judgment that I am not a man any longer. I am a figment, a concoction, an overblown invention born of low-grade whiskey and high-grade journalistic distortion; of street and saloon gossip and dime-novel bombast.”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Memoirs of Wild Bill Hickok (2009)
“I can get pissed off very easily.”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: He Is Legend" interview at Cinemaspy (2007)
“X — This day when it had light mother called me a retch. You retch she said. I saw in her eyes the anger. I wonder what it is a retch.”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is a secret but I have pulled the chain out of the wall. I can see out the little window all I like.”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I thought what father said. Oh god he said. And only eight.”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This day father hit in the chain again before it had light. I have to try to pull it out again. He said I was bad to come upstairs. He said never do that again or he would beat me hard. That hurts.”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am not so glad. All day it is cold in here. The chain comes slow out of the wall. And I have a bad anger with mother and father. I will show them. I will do what I did that once. I will screech and laugh loud. I will run on the walls. Last I will hang head down by all my legs and laugh and drip green all over until they are sorry they didn't be nice to me. If they try to beat me again I'll hurt them. I will.”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Be this the final entry In mankind’s book of psalms He knit his shroud with atoms And dug his grave with bombs.”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The memory of you shall not perish with your untimely sepulture. You are, dear friend, not so much out of the game as playing on another field.”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They passed churches. People were packed inside them. They overflowed out onto the steps. “Poor fools,” Richard muttered, his hands still shaking. Norman took a deep breath. “I wish I was a poor fool,” he said. “A poor fool who could believe in something.” “Maybe,” Richard said. Then he added, “I’d rather spend the last day believing what I think is true.”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I don’t know why I thought that would help but I called him. I’d have called anyone just to have another mind to help. Parents are useless beings when they’re afraid for their children.”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Something black and of the night had come crawling out of the Middle Ages. Something with no framework or credulity, something that had been consigned, fact and figure, to the pages of imaginative literature. Vampires were passé; Summers’ idylls or Stoker’s melodramatics or a brief inclusion in the Britannica or grist for the pulp writer’s mill or raw material for the B-film factories. A tenuous legend passed from century to century. Well, it was true.”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Well, it was true. ... True, he thought, but no one ever got the chance to know it. Oh, they knew it was something, but it couldn’t be that — not that. That was imagination, that was superstition, there was no such thing as that. And, before science had caught up with the legend, the legend had swallowed science and everything.”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The world’s gone mad, he thought. The dead walk about and I think nothing of it. The return of corpses has become trivial in import. How quickly one accepts the incredible if only one sees it.”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Despite everything he had or might have (except, of course, another human being), life gave no promise of improvement or even of change. The way things shaped up, he would live out his life with no more than he already had. And how many years was that? Thirty, maybe forty if he didn’t drink himself to death. The thought of forty more years of living as he was made him shudder.”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To his complete astonishment, he later found himself offering up a stumbling prayer that the dog would be protected. It was a moment in which he felt a desperate need to believe in a God that shepherded his own creations. But, even praying, he felt a twinge of self-reproach, and knew he might start mocking his own prayer at any second. Somehow, though, he managed to ignore his iconoclastic self and went on praying anyway. Because he wanted the dog, because he needed the dog.”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sometimes he had indulged in daydreams about finding someone. More often, though, he had tried to adjust to what he sincerely believed was the inevitable — that he was actually the only one left in the world. At least in as much of the world as he could ever hope to know.”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“His sex drive had diminished, had virtually disappeared. Salvation of the monk, he thought. The drive had to go sooner or later, or no normal man could dedicate himself to any life that excluded sex. Now, happily, he felt almost nothing; perhaps a hardly discernible stirring far beneath the rocky strata of abstinence. He was content to leave it at that. Especially since there was no certainty that Ruth was the companion he had waited for. Or even the certainty that he could allow her to live beyond tomorrow. Cure her? Curing was unlikely.”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Robert Neville looked out over the new people of the earth. He knew he did not belong to them; he knew that, like the vampires, he was anathema and black terror to be destroyed. And, abruptly, the concept came, amusing to him even in his pain. ... Full circle. A new terror born in death, a new superstition entering the unassailable fortress of forever. I am legend.”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I looked at all the people, feeling sorry for them. They were still subordinate to clock and calendar. Absolved of that, I stood becalmed.”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Well, why not? My dream woman has always been unavailable to me. What difference does a mere three-quarters of a century make?”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To the human eye, stars move very slowly. Considering their relative motion, at this moment she and I might be looking up at virtually the same sight. She in 1896, me in 1971.”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Maurice Nicoll says all history is a living today. We are not enjoying one spark of life in a huge, dead waste. We are, instead, existing at one point "in a vast process of the living who still think and feel but are invisible to us.”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I wish I were a boy again—unquestioning, with no need to analyze the moment. I had that feeling when I first stared at her photograph; I was emotionally overwhelmed. Now reality impinges. I’m pulled in two directions simultaneously—toward yearning and toward reason. It’s at times like this I hate the brain. It always builds more barriers than it can topple.”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I will try to be consistent, no longer oscillating like some planet that has lost its way. For, at long last, I have found my sun.”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What does that motto on the wall of your office say? That which you believe becomes your world.”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Heaven would never be heaven without you.”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Thank you...for gracing my life with your lovely presence, for adding the sweet measure of your soul to my existence.”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Let this hell be our heaven.”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As her analyst had told her: the deeper buried the distress, the further into the body it went. The digestive system was about as far as it could go to hide.”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They think of suicide as a quick route to oblivion, an escape. Far from it...It merely alters a person from one form to another. Nothing can destroy the spirit. Suicide only precipitates a darker continuation of the same conditions from which escape was sought. A condition under circumstances so much more painful.”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What condemnation could possibly be more harsh than one's own when self-pretense is no longer possible?”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If men only felt about death as they do about sleep, all terrors would cease...Men sleep contentedly, assured that they will wake the following morning. They should feel the same about the end of their lives.”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Does a man’s existence change in any way when he removes his overcoat? Neither does it change when death removes the overcoat of his body. He’s still the same person. No wiser. No happier. No better off. Exactly the same. "Death is merely continuation at another level.”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'd been in the densest part of the earth's aura he told me, an aqueous region which was the source of myths about the waters of Lethe, the River Styx.”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I've been very fortunate throughout my career. And I've been lucky enough to have worked with some great and talented people, like Price and Serling. I was just a part of the whole phenomenon coming together. They were exciting times that bubbled over with energy for all those involved.”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When I first joined my local library, I read endlessly. I immediately headed for the fantasy section, fairy tales, you name it. As a teen-ager, I read every novel by Kenneth Roberts, who wrote historical novels about the Revolutionary War period. My mother used to read to me. Heidi was one of my childhood favorites.”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I've always considered myself an offbeat writer. Out here in California they like to categorize, so I'm a science fiction writer. I wrote science fiction to break into the writing business. My love is fantasy. I wrote one of my early novels in four days sitting in a closet which I'd converted into an office, using an old Smith-Corona that my parents had given me for Christmas when I was 12.”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“George Romero filmed an homage to the book, and he called it Night of the Living Dead. Homage means I can make the picture and I don't have to pay you for your book. As a teen-ager I saw the movie "Dracula," and it occurred to me that if one vampire was scary, a whole world populated by vampires would be really scary.”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To me, I don't even think of life after death. To me, life after death and reincarnation are just slices of the pie. Life is a huge wheel and it goes around and around, and life after death is just a segment of that. It comes down to spiritual growth. I think that we keep coming back until we learn what we need to learn, until we get it right. I think we've all lived hundreds, maybe thousands of times. That which you think becomes your world. It's only when we're alive and in this world that we have the chance to progress. From the state of the world today, we haven't made much progress.”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Life is a risk; so is writing. You have to love it.”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source