Richard Matheson Quotes

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.

He was out hunting for Cortman. It had become a relaxing hobby, hunting for Cortman; one of the few diversions left to him.

I’m an animal! he exulted. I’m a dumb, stupid animal and I’m going to drink!

That which you believe becomes your world.

Siempre, a pesar de todo, había deseado encontrar a un semejante: hombre, mujer, niño, no importaba. Sin la incesante influencia de las masas, el sexo perdía rápidamente importancia. En cambio, la soledad seguía en primera línea.

Did you know, Robert, that, in extreme unction, the seven centers of the body — covering the vital organs — are anointed to assist the dying person to withdraw vitality from those organs in preparation for complete withdrawal through the silver cord? And absolution of the dead was established to make certain that the silver cord is severed and all etheric matter withdrawn from the body.

…Not that it was unjust; not that the scales were forced out of balance. Where there had been good, it showed as clearly. Kindnesses, accomplishments, all those were present, too.

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.

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?

No, by God, he had no intention of going on like a blind man, plodding down a path of brainless, fruitless existence until old age or accident took him. Either he found the answer or he ditched the whole mess, life included.

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.

Shall I kill her now? Shall I not even investigate, but kill her and burn her?
His throat moved. Such thoughts were a hideous testimony to the world he had accepted; a world in which murder was easier than hope.

In a world of monotonous horror there could be no salvation in wild dreaming. Horror he had adjusted to. But monotony was the greater obstacle, and he realized it now, understood it at long last.

... And suddenly he thought, I'm the abnormal one now. Normalcy was a
majority concept, the standard of many and not the standard of just
one man.

Abruptly that realization joined with what he saw on their faces — awe, fear, shrinking horror — and he knew that they were afraid of
him. To them he was some terrible scourge they had never seen, a
scourge even worse than the disease they had come to live with. He was
an invisible spectre who had left for evidence of his existence the
bloodless bodies of their loved ones. And he understood what they felt
and did not hate them. His right hand tightened on the tiny envelope
of pills. So long as the end did not come with violence, so long as it
did not have to be a butchery before their eyes...

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.

A coughing chuckle filled his throat. He turned and leaned against the
wall while he swallowed the pills. Full circle, he thought while the
final lethargy crept into his limbs. Full circle. A new terror born in
death, a new superstition entering the unassailable fortress of
forever.

I am legend.

What condemnation could possibly be more harsh than one’s own, when self-pretense is no longer possible?