Top 100 Quotes About Suspense
#1. I think the most important part of storytelling is tension. It's the constant tension of suspense that in a sense mirrors life, because nobody knows what's going to happen three hours from now.
Richard Condon
#2. Terrific! A successful blend of genres, complex and fascinating characters, and loads of suspense make 24 Bones a must-read.
Nate Kenyon
#3. Oh! write, write. Finish it at once. Let there be an end of this suspense. Fix, commit, condemn yourself.
Jane Austen
#4. Lisa Marie Rice thrilled fans and new readers alike when she returned to the world of her popular Midnight Series with Midnight Vengeance and Midnight Promises. This June, in Midnight Secrets, we get to fall in love with her cracktastic and sexy romantic suspense series all over again.
Lisa Marie Rice
#5. I think one of the appeals of suspense is to safely explore our innermost fears.
Lisa Gardner
#6. Hitchcock had a charm about him. He was very funny at times. He was incredibly brilliant in his field of suspense.
Tippi Hedren
#7. I've never done a film before where every single person in the audience knows the ending. I mean suspense, twists are almost impossible these days. People are blogging your endings from their cinema seats.
Danny Boyle
#8. A woman, I always say, should be like a good suspense movie: The more left to the imagination, the more excitement there is. This should be her aim - to create suspense, to let a man discover things about her without her having to tell him.
Alfred Hitchcock
#9. 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
#10. Learning teaches how to carry things in suspense, without prejudice, till you resolve it.
Francis Bacon
#11. Suspense is achieved by information control: What you know. What the reader knows. What the characters know.
Tom Clancy
#12. His most characteristic detective stories end with the realization that no rational account of events is possible, and his suspense stories tend to close with terror not dissipated but omnipresent, like God.
("Introduction")
Francis M. Nevins Jr.
#13. For there is nothing more intolerable to mankind than suspense; when a thing is once decided, men can but endure whatever out of the catalogue of evils it is their misfortune to undergo.
B.H. Liddell Hart
#14. So long as you tell a story that falls within the fairly generous boundaries of the suspense novel, you're free to make the novel as good as you can. You're allowed to challenge the reader. You can experiment with voice and style.
Rodman Philbrick
#15. 40 Words for Sorrow is brilliant-one of the finest crime novels I've ever read. Giles Blunt writes with uncommon grace, style and compassion and he plots like a demon. This book has it all-unforgettable characters, beautiful language, throat-constricting suspense.
Jonathan Kellerman
#16. Suspense is torture ... but delightful
or there'd be no gambling in the world.
Ada Leverson
#17. I'm a bit more of a suspense reader on the adult side, but my favorites were the ones I grew up reading.
Jennifer Armentrout
#18. Curiosity is, and has been from the creation of the world, a master passion. To awaken it, to gratify it by slight degrees, and yet leave something always in suspense, is to establish the surest hold that can be had, in wrong, on the unthinking portion of mankind.
Charles Dickens
#20. In suspense novels even subplots about relationships have to have conflict.
Jeffery Deaver
#21. The anguished suspense of watching the lips you hunger for, framing the words, the death sentence, of sheer triteness!
Evelyn Waugh
#22. When the reader and one narrator know something the other narrator does not, the opportunities for suspense and plot development and the shifting of reader sympathies get really interesting.
Sara Zarr
#23. I often will write a scene from three different points of view to find out which has the most tension and which way I'm able to conceal the information I'm trying to conceal. And that is, at the end of the day, what writing suspense is all about.
Dan Brown
#24. I tell students that suspense comes, not from knowing almost nothing, but from knowing almost everything and caring very much about the small part still unknown.
Orson Scott Card
#25. You could call it that [urban Western], I guess, you could certainly call it that. A lot of these types of films are, really, if you get down to the core most suspense thrillers in this genre, the Western is sort of the birth of it all.
Antoine Fuqua
#26. You have to go out of your way as a suspense novelist to find situations where the protagonists are somewhat helpless and in real danger.
Nelson DeMille
#27. I read what I like to write: romantic suspense. I also love thrillers and novels of suspense, but I can't handle extreme violence and torture.
Jayne Ann Krentz
#28. Suspense is one of the ways you persuade a reader to become engaged and stay engaged with your work.
Marge Piercy
#29. Positive means feeling enjoyment, suspense, amusement, and the satisfaction of what psychologists call belief affirmation - stories turning out as readers believe they should. That requires more than just a happy ending. It means affirming readers' beliefs and validating their morals.
Donald Maass
#30. Suspense-is Hostiler than Death-Death- tho soever Broad, Is just Death, and cannot increase- Suspense-does not conclude-.
Emily Dickinson
#31. There are no rules. You can write a story, if you wish, with no conflict, no suspense, no beginning, middle or end. Of course, you have to be regarded as a genius to get away with it, and that's the hardest part - convincing everybody you're a genius.
Fredric Brown
#32. He remembered something else about those high school days wishing he could cut straight to that first kiss to get it out of the way. Partly to get rid of the suspense, knowing the moment was hours away. Partly because he just plain wanted to kiss her.
Sierra Donovan
#33. The suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.
Oscar Wilde
#34. Is it not better to remain in suspense than to entangle yourself in the many errors that the human fancy has produced? Is it not better to suspend your convictions than to get mixed up in these seditious and quarrelsome divisions?
Michel De Montaigne
#35. I am comfortable calling myself a writer of suspense, or a writer of thrillers; both terms are sort of interchangeable to me. I think that came from a sense of being at conflict with my true nature throughout my youth, and being afraid of discovery, and feeling as if I didn't belong.
Christopher Rice
#36. For success, the author must make the reader care about the destiny of the principals, and sustain this anxiety, or suspense, for about 100,000 words.
Ken Follett
#37. You ain't scared I'll kill you?
You already did. At the dark park. The suspense is gone.
Dia Reeves
#38. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
Kurt Vonnegut
#39. On the rare occasions on which a movie was shown, there was as much suspense in the audience over whether the electricity would hold out to the end of the film as there was in the film itself.
Robert A. Caro
#40. Even cowards can endure hardship; only he brave can endure suspense
Mignon McLaughlin
#41. 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
#42. The audience wants to be attracted not by the critics, but by a great story. You must deliver to the audience emotion - and when I say emotion, I mean suspense, drama, love.
Dino De Laurentiis
#43. Romantic Suspense, we love you so.
You make us cringe, and give us hope.
Sometimes we lust,
sometimes we cry,
But in the end,
you make us sigh.
Maureen A. Miller
#44. I try to end every chapter with an air of suspense. I try to leave the reader wanting to turn the page.
Nelson DeMille
#45. Oh! the suspense, the fearful, acute suspense, of standing idly by while the life of one we dearly love, is trembling in the balance!
Charles Dickens
#46. 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
#47. There is nothing like suspense and anxiety for barricading a human's mind against the Enemy. He wants men to be concerned with what they do; our business is to keep them thinking about what will happen to them.
C.S. Lewis
#48. Breathtakingly real and utterly compelling, Immoral dishes up page-turning psychological suspense while treating us lucky readers to some of the most literate and stylish writing you'll find anywhere today.
Jeffery Deaver
#49. I do try not to spend much time reading in the suspense genre.
Thomas Perry
#50. To me a great sci-fi movie has elements of horror and suspense.
Moon Bloodgood
#51. top-boots - not to keep the reader any longer in suspense, in short, the eyes were the wandering eyes of Mr. Grummer, and the body was the body of the same gentleman.
Charles Dickens
#52. I read suspense and horror, somethings that intrigue me. I have always been fascinated by death.
Richard Ramirez
#53. VOID is filled with intrigue, suspense, and smoldering desire. This story will keep you turning the page until the very end.
Aleatha Romig
#54. Before I became a suspense novelist, I wrote romantic suspense as Alicia Scott.
Lisa Gardner
#56. The way I express ideas is through the plot, Suspense is an important part of expressing an idea.
Dara Horn
#57. Everything you could want - action, suspense, character and setting, all floating on the easy lyricism of a fine writer at the top of his game.
Lee Child
#58. Mystery is an intellectual process ... But suspense is essentially an emotional process.
Alfred Hitchcock
#59. As far as how important the real-life resonance of the stories is, I think it must play at least a small role in the show's success, because it gives the show this sense of suspense from the fact that it seems at least plausible.
Michael Loceff
#60. Life is like a novel. It's filled with suspense. You have no idea what is going to happen until you turn the page.
Sidney Sheldon
#61. Paranormal suspense and romance together in one non-stop rollercoaster of passion and adventure. - Love Romance Passion
Terry Spear
#62. There's something nice and valuable and wonderful about the suspense and the classic horror that doesn't just crutch on blood and the almost pornographic view of fear.
Amber Heard
#64. I am more of a suspense writer. A mystery writer solves mysteries. I am a 'high suspense' writer.
Iris Johansen
#65. Gingerbread Man A Nursery Rhyme Suspense Lee Strauss
Lee Strauss
#66. For me, suspense doesn't have any value if it's not balanced by humor.
Alfred Hitchcock
#67. Suspense: the only literary tool that has any effect upon tyrants and savages.
E. M. Forster
#68. All the ending does is ruin perfectly good suspense," he said with a wink and headed for the door.
Tarun Shanker
#69. To me, romance and suspense go hand in hand. What's more suspenseful than wondering how two wonderful people can manage to get together in spite of the world going crazy around them?
Maggie Shayne
#70. Renovations (Horror Suspense novella) John Stone
John Stone
#71. Suspense left my life a long time ago, now it has returned. I do not care for it.
Ben Marcus
#72. 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
#73. William Goldman's Marathon Man was a novel that taught me about suspense. I was maybe 16 years old when I read it and I remember thinking, "You could put a gun to my head and I wouldn't put this book down." I loved that feeling - and want to give it others.
Harlan Coben
#74. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at once.There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. When seen all at once, they produce an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and deep.
Kurt Vonnegut
#75. What fiction could match - in drama or suspense - man's first walk on the Moon?
Leonard Nimoy
#76. Donald Trump is talking about running for president. He hasn't made an announcement, but I want to tell you something. The fake suspense is killing me.
David Letterman
#77. 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
#78. Whether labeled as such or not, I think every book I've ever written has been, more or less, a romantic suspense. I have always put tremendous effort into making each book a page turner: The harder it is for the reader to put it down, the better I've done my job.
Maggie Shayne
#79. I never think about genre when I work. I've written fantasy, science fiction, supernatural fiction, and am now working on a suspense novel. Genres are mostly useful as a marketing tool, and to help booksellers known where to shelve a book.
Elizabeth Hand
#80. The hunger to be alone, characteristic of anyone in stage four, comes from sheer suspense. The person cannot wait to find out what comes next in the unfolding of the soul's drama.
Deepak Chopra
#81. 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
#82. Delayed gratification hints that something terrible is going to happen, and then delays the resolution.
It's that interval between the promise of something awful and it actually happening, where suspense resides.
Sandy Vaile
#83. A mystery is a whodunit. You know what happened, but not how or who's behind it. A thriller, or a suspense, is a howdunit. You know what happened, and you usually know who did it, but you keep reading because you want to know how they pulled it off.
M.J. Rose
#84. An unforgettable tale of love, lust, faith, betrayal, and redemption. A powerful, mesmerizing suspense novel-a tour de force!
Judith Kelman
#85. No man is so faint-hearted that he would rather hang in suspense for ever than drop once for all.
Seneca.
#86. The others forgot the work and the weather watching them throw. It was art. A thousand dollars a throw in Madison Square Garden wouldn't have gotten any more breathless suspense. It would have just been more people holding in.
Zora Neale Hurston
#87. All those who love thrillers will find in Michael Alexiades's first novel a source of great pleasure and satisfaction. It combines suspense and knowledge, experience and imagination. His grateful readers will now wait for the next.
Elie Wiesel
#88. One can think effectively only when one is willing to endure suspense and to undergo the trouble of searching.
John Dewey
#89. Life is replete with comedy, drama, horror, suspense, tragedy, romance, mystery, fantasy and a good dose of fiction. While at times the plot may seem to be lacking, the special effects alone are well worth the price of admission.
Derek R. Audette
#90. It is a miserable thing to live in suspense; it is the life of the spider.
Jonathan Swift
#91. It's not just what Christian fiction lacks I appreciate - it's what it offers. The variety is vast: contemporary, historical, suspense, mysteries, adventure, young adult, romance, fantasy, science fiction.
Randy Alcorn
#93. Public justice is the greatest kind of show, my brother. Drama. Suspense. And best of all education en masse.
Khaled Hosseini
#94. I'm a huge fan of ghost stories, that sort of slow build, the suspense and the questioning about whether you're imagining something or if it's real.
Gillian Flynn
#95. 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
#96. Really I'm a fan of any movie, whether it's suspense, action, or comedy - anything that has a good story.
Scott Eastwood
#97. The suspense is terrible. I hope it'll last.
Gene Wilder
#98. You want to know the hardest thing about being smart?
What?
I pretty much always know what's going to happen next; there's no suspense.
Billy Bob Thornton
#99. I'm starting to understand what everyone says about you."
"And what, pray tell, do they say? Don't leave me in suspense here."
"That there's something seriously wrong with you."
"Oh, well, I could've told you that. There's a lot wrong with me.
J.M. Darhower
#100. 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
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