Top 1200 Suspense Novels Quotes & Sayings - Page 3

Good novels are not written by orthodoxy-sniffers, nor by people who are conscience-stricken about their own unorthodoxy. Good novels are written by people who are not frightened.

For me, suspense doesn't have any value if it's not balanced by humor.

'Duel' is one of the greatest suspense films of all time.

The difference between graphic novels and web comics is even greater than graphic novels and story boarding. Web comics really is a legitimately separate genre.

The very name of the thriller '89' suggests that there is suspense.

The writer I feel the most affinity with - you said you felt my books are 19th century novels, I think they're 18th century novels - is Fielding, Henry Fielding, he's the guy who does it for me.

I like the freedom of novels. With the memoirs, I always had to keep to the facts. I like that with novels, if I want to go off and write something quite dramatic or outrageous or something completely different, I can do it if I want to.

Suspense is torture ... but delightful--or there'd be no gambling in the world.

I can't imagine otherwise - I guess Virginia Woolf could write wonderful novels where the women never have sex, and her novels work. But for me, I don't think I could write a plot without sex happening somewhere.

To me a great sci-fi movie has elements of horror and suspense.

The structure of my novels has nothing to do with the narrative mode of cinema. My novels would be very difficult to film without ruining them completely. I think this is the area where writers need to place ourselves: from a position of absolute modernity and contemporaneity, creating a culture of objects which cinema cannot.

This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.

If you don't do the suspense correctly, then your jump scares are not going to work.

What fiction could match - in drama or suspense - man's first walk on the Moon?

I love written books and novels, but I really love graphic novels and comic books!

I mean suspense, twists are almost impossible these days.

Ideally, I like to integrate the human issues into the suspense story itself.

I think one of the appeals of suspense is to safely explore our innermost fears.

One can think effectively only when one is willing to endure suspense and to undergo the trouble of searching.

As far as benefits to reading historical novels, there are several! For one thing, you learn about life in another era. Secondly, these novels help us to develop a deeper understanding of the legacy of women who came before us and the strides made by our ancestors.

I often say to my students in workshops that if they are trying to find literary inspiration, they should not go and read novels, because novels are more appropriate for series. Where as they should read short stories - that's the right format for you to be able to actually display the narrative in a film.

My major preoccupation is the question, 'What is reality ?' Many of my stories and novels deal with psychotic states or drug-induced states by which I can present the concept of a multiverse rather than a universe. Music and sociology are themes in my novels, also radical political trends; in particular I've written about fascism and my fear of it.

My first seven novels were contemporary spiritual novels, my next nine had strong elements of fantasy, and now I'm writing thrillers, more as a choice to spread my wings than anything. Writers, like good wine, should mature with age.

I'm not reading any novels right now, though not for lack of trying. Unless they're really good, my attention in most novels tends to sputter out after a hundred pages or so - an awful admission for someone who is trying to write one, but it's true.

I am delighted if people find that kind of sustenance in novels, but perhaps it's because they don't read the Scripture that they are comparing it to, which would perhaps provide deeper sustenance than many contemporary novels.

Suspense is worst than disappointment.

In all my novels, a sense of place - not just geographic but social - is a critical element. I have always been drawn to the novels of Edith Wharton, among others, where social dynamics are crucial. Wharton's class consciousness fascinates me, and some of the tension in my books stems from that.

Novels are usually built on conflict, sometimes very, very difficult conflict. It's why men write war novels - because there you go, there's the conflict writ large.

I entered a poem in a poetry contest around 1987, and the poem won and I received $1,000 for it. That made me realize that maybe what I was writing was worth reading to people. After that, for some reason, I turned to novels and I've written mainly novels ever since.

She should have done science, not spent all her time with her head in novels. Novels gave you a completely false idea about life, they told lies and they implied there were endings when in reality there were no endings, everything just went on and on and on.

Every story needs an element of suspense - or it's lousy.

Suspense is a real tough beast in terms of the filmmaking.

Suspense arises naturally from good writing - it's not a spice to be added separately.

my crime books are actually novels and are written as such. One might even say that each one is really two novels, one of which is the story I tell the reader, and the other the buried story I know and let slip now and then into a clue to whet the reader's interest.

I do try not to spend much time reading in the suspense genre.

Suspense combines curiosity with fear and pulls them up a rising slope.

People who attack biography choose as their models vulgar and offensive biography. You could equally attack novels or poems by choosing bad poems or novels.

Suspense: the only literary tool that has any effect upon tyrants and savages.

People lose it when I say this, but I'm a novelist who doesn't read novels. There are lots of good reasons for not reading novels! I'm also a game writer who doesn't play games - I keep everything very separate. The only crossover with me is comics. I write them, and I read them passionately.

The Hunger Games has epic spectacle, yearning romance and suspense that won't quit!

Suspense left my life a long time ago, now it has returned. I do not care for it.

I tend to be more of a novel writer. In fact, some of my novels started out as short stories, and I just got carried away! I think some of my best writing is in the short story form, but novels come more naturally to me.

Sound design is always critical, especially when you're doing a thriller with a lot of suspense and tension.

I've always been charmed by houses, and descriptions of them are prominent in my novels. So prominent, in fact, that my editor once pointed out to me that all of my early novels had houses on the covers.

We've had science fiction novels where China is dominant; we've had novels where India is dominant, and I suppose it's all about getting away from that cliched old tired idea that the future belongs to the West.

Novels function and the power of novels function because of their stories.

If you read novels of the 19th century, they're pretty experimental. They take lots of chances; they seem to break a lot of rules. You've got omniscient narrators lecturing at times to the reader in first person. If you go back to the earliest novels, this is happening to a wild extent, like 'Tristram Shandy' or 'Don Quixote'.

'Harry Potter' shouldn't be children's first experience with suspense and plot turns.

My novels are in the literature section as opposed to the romance section of bookstores because they're not romance novels. If I tried to have them published as romances, they'd be rejected. I write dramatic fiction; a further sub-genre would classify them as love stories.

One of the things that I love about writing novels is that it really doesn't matter what next step you take as long as you're pursuing some intuition or instinct. Of course, then, intuitions or instincts don't make for great novels, but they often make for good first drafts.

The writers who inspire me most are all women: Enid Blyton, Agatha Christie, Margaret Mitchell and Emily and Charlotte Bronte. As for contemporary novels, one of my favourites is 'Everyone Brave is Forgiven' by Chris Cleave. It's the sort of book to read if you've fallen out of love with reading - it reminds you just how brilliant novels can be.

Anguish of suspense made men even desire the arrival of enemies.

When I was young, there was no such thing as YA. You simply went from reading children's novels to reading adult novels. So one year, I was reading Tove Jansson, and the next year, I was reading Stephen King.

I'm a big fan of suspense and tension filmmaking, and that was my goal with 'The Conjuring.'

We always have the movies that are more toward real life, but they don't have that much drama or suspense, or we have the full of drama or suspense, but they're far away from real life. Always when I was watching a film, films with good drama, I was thinking, "I wish they were more close to real life." But when I was watching real life films I was thinking, "Well I wish it had more drama." I've tried, in the movies that I worked so far, to get these two things closer and closer to each other.

I think suspense is a big thing.

Thunderous action and nail-biting suspense

Novels need readers of a certain kind, people who are patient and enjoy immersing themselves in another perspective for uninterrupted stretches of time. Reading habits might well be changing. People who pay for novels might overlap significantly with those who engage in Twitter and Facebook.

It is a miserable thing to live in suspense; it is the life of the spider.

Poetry can only be made out of other poems; novels out of other novels.