RICHARD MATHESON

I wrote about real people and real circumstances and real neighborhoods. There was no crypt or castles or H.P. Lovecraft-type environments. They were just about normal people who had something bizarre happening to them in the neighborhood.

To me there is nothing that goes against nature. If it seems incomprehensible, it's only because we haven't been able to understand it yet.

I could never write about strange kingdoms. I could never do 'Harry Potter' or anything like that. Even when I did science-fiction, I didn't write about foreign planets and distant futures. I certainly never did fantasies about trolls living under bridges.

'I Am Legend' is quite unusual for its time. I just wanted to write a story about female boxers, and I couldn't get that going in my mind. I don't know exactly where the idea of just a man pitting himself against a robot boxer came from.

I think we're yearning for something beyond the every day. And I will tell you I don't believe in the supernatural, I believe in the supernormal.

I had to write about realistic circumstances. That's the way my brain works. And I think that gave me a sort of place in the field.

The vampire was real. It was only that his true story had never been told.

I'm sitting in my office trying to squeeze a story from my head. It is that kind of morning when you feel like melting the typewriter into a bar of steel and clubbing yourself to death with it. (“Advance Notice”)

Full circle. A new terror born in death, a new superstition entering the unassailable fortress of forever. I am legend.

Thank you...for gracing my life with your lovely presence, for adding the sweet measure of your soul to my existence.

A man could get used to anything if he had to.

In a world of monotonous horror there could be no salvation in wild dreaming.

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.

There we will, I pray, remain and learn and grow until the time when we will rise together to the ultimate heights, changing in appearance but never in devotion, sharing the transcendent glory of our love through all eternity.

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.

Quiet is here and all in me. ("Dress of White Silk")

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

If you go too far in fantasy and break the string of logic, and become nonsensical, someone will surely remind you of your dereliction....Pound for pound, fantasy makes a tougher opponent for the creative person.

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.

Everyone has something to hide. And if they couldn't hide it the world would be in a lot worse mess than it is.

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.

When I'm writing, especially when I'm writing in first person, I don't think about the characterization, or how they are going to express themselves, I just express my own approach to these things. I think most writers can never divorce themselves from their private lives and personas; they are the ones that are writing. And the more they remove themselves from their own persona, the more, perhaps, mechanical the work becomes.

…Those who’ve marred their appearance in any way by their actions in life aren’t forced to witness that marring. If they were, they’d become self-conscious and be unable to concentrate on improving themselves.

God, how impossible life is without money. Nothing can ever overcome it, it's everything when it's anything. How can I write in peace with endless worries of money, money, money? (“Disappearing Act”)

Now when I die, I shall only be dead.