Explore Quotes by 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.

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 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.

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 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.

Chris Nielsen: Thank you for every kindness. Thank you for our children. For the first time I saw them. Thank you for being someone I was always proud to be with. For your guts, for your sweetness. For how you always looked, for how I always wanted to touch you. God, you were my life. I apologize for everytime I ever failed you. Especially this one.

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

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.

What would a Mohammedan vampire do if faced with a cross?

In a typical desperation for quick answers, easily understood, people had turned to primitive worship as the solution. With less than success. Not only had they died as quickly as the rest of the people, but they had died with terror in their hearts, with a mortal dread flowing in their very veins.

A surfeiting of terror soon made terror a cliché.

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.

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.

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

How long did it take for a past to die?

No longer will you be a weird Robinson Crusoe, imprisoned on an island of night surrounded by oceans of death.

That which you believe becomes your world

He stood there for a moment looking around the silent room, shaking his head slowly. All these books, he thought, the residue of a planet’s intellect, the scrapings of futile minds, the leftovers, the potpourri of artifacts that had no power to save men from perishing.

And, before science had caught up with the legend, the legend had swallowed science and everything.

Normalcy was a majority concept, the standard of many and not the standard of just one man.