Top 70 Suspense Quotes

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

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.
Alfred Hitchcock
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.
Ira Sachs
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.
Julian Barratt
Sound design is always critical, especially when you’re doing a thriller with a lot of suspense and tension.
Sam Esmail
A lot of the best suspense operates on a careful withholding of information as opposed to the doling out of information.
Karyn Kusama
Really I’m a fan of any movie, whether it’s suspense, action, or comedy – anything that has a good story.
Scott Eastwood
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.
Stacey Abrams
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.
Jennifer Armentrout
Even though I got a late start, first publishing an essay when I was 50 years old, I’ve since written eight suspense novels.
Hallie Ephron
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.
Michael Koryta
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.
Morgan Saylor
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.
William Jay Smith
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.
Karyn Kusama
To me a great sci-fi movie has elements of horror and suspense.
Moon Bloodgood
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.
Lisa Unger
I’m interested in the human more than I’m interested in building suspense.
Niels Arden Oplev
Before I became a suspense novelist, I wrote romantic suspense as Alicia Scott.
Lisa Gardner
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.
Karen Robards
I’ve said in many interviews that I like my fiction to be unpredictable. I like there to be considerable suspense.
George R. R. Martin
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.
Laura Leighton
‘Duel’ is one of the greatest suspense films of all time.
Greg Mottola
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.
Steven Moffat
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.
Margo Jefferson
This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.
Oscar Wilde
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.
Sriram Raghavan
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.
Michael Shannon
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.
Chuck Hogan
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.
Richard Corliss
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.
Susie Dent
I keep thinking I’ll enjoy suspense novels, and sometimes I do. I’ve read about 20 Dick Francis novels.
Nicholson Baker
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.
Mark Billingham
I think that the romantic suspense that you used to get

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.
Anne Reid
I like a good suspense thriller when it’s smart and well done like ‘Armed Response’ is.
Seth Rollins
‘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.
Sandra Brown
If you don’t do the suspense correctly, then your jump scares are not going to work.
James Wan
Even cowards can endure hardship; only the brave can endure suspense.
Mignon McLaughlin
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.
John Carroll Lynch
One of my favorite authors to read is Eric Ambler, who helped pioneer the form of realistic suspense novels.
David Grann
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?
Debra Granik
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.
Lisa Gardner
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.
Scott Foley
Suspense arises naturally from good writing – it’s not a spice to be added separately.
Leigh Michaels
I believe that the writer should tell a story. I believe in plot. I believe in creating characters and suspense.
Ernest Gaines
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.
James Rollins
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.
Ruth Rendell
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.
Tom Shales
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.
Otto Penzler
What keeps readers turning pages is suspense, which you can create using a variety of techniques, including tension, pacing and foreshadowing.
Leigh Michaels
I’m a big fan of suspense and tension filmmaking, and that was my goal with ‘The Conjuring.’
James Wan
We all live in suspense from day to day; in other words, you are the hero of your own story.
Mary McCarthy
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.
Michael Koryta
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.
Lisa Gardner
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.
Ed Harris
Every story needs an element of suspense – or it’s lousy.
Sydney Pollack
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.
Jacqueline MacInnes Wood