Words matter. These are the best Suspense Quotes from famous people such as Alfred Hitchcock, Ira Sachs, Julian Barratt, Sam Esmail, Karyn Kusama, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Luck is everything… My good luck in life was to be a really frightened person. I’m fortunate to be a coward, to have a low threshold of fear, because a hero couldn’t make a good suspense film.
Suspense films are often based on communication problems, and that affects all of the plot points. It almost gives it kind of a fable feeling.
Films do have suspense and tensions and scares and jumps, and I like to write things that have both in them, comedy and horror, but sometimes they are hard to balance.
Sound design is always critical, especially when you’re doing a thriller with a lot of suspense and tension.
A lot of the best suspense operates on a careful withholding of information as opposed to the doling out of information.
Really I’m a fan of any movie, whether it’s suspense, action, or comedy – anything that has a good story.
Leadership requires the ability to engage and to create empathy for communities with disparate needs and ideas. Telling an effective story – especially in romantic suspense – demands a similar skill set.
I can’t wait for everyone to read ‘Don’t Look Back.’ It’s something very different for me, my first romantic suspense novel, so I’m very excited to be sharing the book, finally.
Even though I got a late start, first publishing an essay when I was 50 years old, I’ve since written eight suspense novels.
Stephen King, by far, is the standard-bearer. I think anyone who writes suspense fiction and says that King isn’t an influence is either lying or being foolish. I read his book ‘On Writing’ before I read pretty much any of his fiction.
I take a few pictures a week, but the best part is waiting for my film to be developed. The suspense is exciting, and the reward is great.
As any parent, teacher, or librarian knows, there is no richer experience than to see children’s faces light up at the suspense of a new tale or the surprise of a new poem. The uninhibited joy with which they listen is surely akin to that of adult audiences of old around campfire and hearth.
To me, sound is a crucial component to, really, any moviegoing experience, but particularly with suspense films or thrillers. I think you need the audience to become subtly really attuned to the soundscape in, like, this uncomfortable way.
To me a great sci-fi movie has elements of horror and suspense.
I read ‘Rebecca’ when I was a teenager and was swept away by the powerful voice, the gut wrenching suspense and the dark, twisted love story at its center.
I’m interested in the human more than I’m interested in building suspense.
Before I became a suspense novelist, I wrote romantic suspense as Alicia Scott.
I love ‘The Guardian’ series. Bianca St. Ives is one of my favorite heroines ever, and the combination of action, suspense, and romance makes her story pure fun to write.
I’ve said in many interviews that I like my fiction to be unpredictable. I like there to be considerable suspense.
I think ‘Pretty Little Liars’ is going to be hugely popular for adults, for kids, for girls, for guys, you know, something for everyone to look at, and the stories are going to be great. There’s suspense every week. The friendship is really fun to watch. I think it’s going to have something for everybody.
‘Duel’ is one of the greatest suspense films of all time.
The trouble with a series as it gets older is it can feel like a tradition, and tradition is the enemy of suspense, and it’s the enemy of comedy. It’s the enemy of everything, really. So you have to shake it up.
Sometimes it feels as if the artist hasn’t done the real work of engaging with the material. Film noir can’t just play off looks and attitudes. A thriller needs a dose of genuine suspense. It does not have to be literal, but it does have to feel genuine. Otherwise the artist is just leeching off the form.
This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.
It is unlike the quintessential thriller where someone is up to something and the audience is speculating. ‘Johnny Gaddaar’ is the opposite of a thriller. In this case, the audience knows right from the outset what transpires and who the likely culprit is. It is a suspense caper.
I like to play characters that get to do it all – to have a bit of comedy here and a bit of pathos here and a bit of suspense here, that’s what’s fun.
The beautiful thing about ‘The Strain Trilogy’ is the ability to move from gore to high fable to creeping dread to domestic drama to unbearable suspense to the uncanny and on and on. The epic journey is designed to support these swings in mood, and that complements my tastes, which are wide-ranging.
The people who run Hollywood are supposed to be masters at creating drama, suspense, thrills – at putting on a great show. If we knew not only who the winners were but also by how much they won, the Oscar show could actually be the Super Bowl of movies.
The term ‘psychological thriller’ is an elastic one these days, tagged liberally on to any story of suspense that explores motivations while keeping blood and chainsaws to a minimum.
I keep thinking I’ll enjoy suspense novels, and sometimes I do. I’ve read about 20 Dick Francis novels.
There are a number of writers who believe it is their duty to throw as many curve balls at the reader as possible. To twist and twist again. These are the Chubby Checkers of crime fiction and, while I admire the craft, I think that it can actually work against genuine suspense.
I think that the romantic suspense that you used to get between people like Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant is much sexier than seeing people taking their clothes off and getting into bed, which is voyeurism.
I like a good suspense thriller when it’s smart and well done like ‘Armed Response’ is.
‘Rainwater’ was particularly special because it was a complete departure from the suspense novels. It’s set in the Great Depression and based on an incident that occurred when my dad was a boy.
If you don’t do the suspense correctly, then your jump scares are not going to work.
Even cowards can endure hardship; only the brave can endure suspense.
Great horror movies are earned. ‘Halloween’ is an earned picture. Every moment of grotesque violence is earned by the suspense they’re able to maintain getting there.
One of my favorite authors to read is Eric Ambler, who helped pioneer the form of realistic suspense novels.
I’m reaching for emotion and drama, the drama of the everyday: what happens when you don’t have shelter, food, and clothing. There are some stakes. If you’re displaced or evicted, there’s a suspense: How will you solve that?
I like to believe my suspense novels marry the strong characters from my romance writing past, with the twisty, clever plots of my mystery writing present.
I like being scared every now and then, I like the suspense and the thrills. Nothing like taking a girlfriend to a movie and holding her hand while she jumps.
Suspense arises naturally from good writing – it’s not a spice to be added separately.
I believe that the writer should tell a story. I believe in plot. I believe in creating characters and suspense.
I’ve mis-signed many a book Rollins or Clemens. My readers quickly become aware. Booksellers will often promote me under both names, and I do plug both at signings. Generally, the fantasy reader has no problem going into the suspense genre. It’s harder for the typical suspense reader to go the other direction.
Suspense is my thing. I think I am able to make people want to keep turning pages. They want to know what happens. So I can do that.
Obviously neither ‘American Idol’ nor ‘Dancing With the Stars’ is a variety show in the classic sense, but the way they incorporate elements of drama, comedy and suspense is moderately ingenious.
Today’s ghost stories tend to be much more physically or psychologically violent. The Victorians were much more leisurely about what might or could happen, building suspense layer by layer rather than punching you in the face.
What keeps readers turning pages is suspense, which you can create using a variety of techniques, including tension, pacing and foreshadowing.
I’m a big fan of suspense and tension filmmaking, and that was my goal with ‘The Conjuring.’
We all live in suspense from day to day; in other words, you are the hero of your own story.
When you read a supernatural suspense story or a ghost story, or a horror story, the evil at play is something that you can dismiss. And I wonder if, in this time, if people really want to be sitting on the subway reading a book about someone releasing a dirty bomb on the subway.
All I’ve really ever done is write since I was 17, so I don’t know anything about anything. For me to do a novel, I have to talk to people who know things. And what keeps me in suspense is that I am a crime aficionado.
I bought the rights to this book, ‘The Ploughmen,’ by a Montana writer named Kim Zupan, and I’ve written the screenplay, and I really feel pretty strong about it. It’s really hauntingly beautiful. It’s got some suspense and great drama, but it’s a real character thing.
Every story needs an element of suspense – or it’s lousy.
I’m a big horror fan, but I don’t enjoy a lot of gore and watching somebody cut their leg off for five hours. I like the older movies where it draws you into the suspense, that sort of shock and awe.
Pages: 1 2