Richard Matheson
Richard Matheson
Richard Burton Mathesonwas an American author and screenwriter, primarily in the fantasy, horror, and science fiction genres. He is best known as the author of I Am Legend, a 1954 horror novel that has been adapted for the screen four times, as well as the movie Somewhere In Time for which Matheson wrote the screenplay, based on his novel Bid Time Return. Matheson also wrote 16 television episodes of The Twilight Zone for Rod Serling, including "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet"...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScreenwriter
Date of Birth20 February 1926
CountryUnited States of America
A surfeiting of terror soon made terror a cliché.
I felt puny and absurd, a ludicrous midget. Easy enough to talk of soul and spirit and essential worth, but not when you're three feet tall.
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.
How quickly one accepts the incredible if only one sees it enough.
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.
When you sleep, your dream world is as real to you as life, isn’t it?
I can get pissed off very easily.
Let the jagged edge of sobriety be now dulled.
Full circle. A new terror born in death, a new superstition entering the unassailable fortress of forever. I am legend.
Failures plagued me. Things I had omitted or ignored, neglected. What I should have given and hadn’t. I felt the biting pang of every unfulfillment.
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 understanding it seemed to give him a sort of quiet peace, a sense of having spread all the cards on his mental table, examined them, and settled conclusively on the desired hand.
No longer will you be a weird Robinson Crusoe, imprisoned on an island of night surrounded by oceans of death.
And, before science had caught up with the legend, the legend had swallowed science and everything.
Now when I die, I shall only be dead.