Quotes About Suspense

It was the great Russian author Chekhov who wrote, "If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there.

If my life was an action movie, my boss would be the spy trying to sabotage my mission, and my mission would be going on Facebook.

Wilkie Collins

The first harsh, sparse, swift drops rush through the leaves and across the ground in a long sigh, as though of relief from intolerable suspense.

Prince Humperdinck] was seventy-five minutes away from his first female murder, and he wondered if he could get his fingers to her throat before even the start of a scream. He had been practicing on giant sausages all the afternoon and had the movements down pretty pat, but then, giant sausages weren't necks and all the wishing in the world wouldn't make them so.

Phrases of neatness, cosiness, and comfort can never be an answer to the sphinx's riddle.

Just her, three men, a fidgety pig and lawful intent.

The Westing Game.

Riley scooched through a hole he knew about in the fence and carefully headed toward Mr. Jenkins's elevated back porch. It was made of concrete and free of snow, shielded by an angled aluminum awning overhead. As he moved closer, Riley could see the tops of a pair of tan boots peeking out of a wooden crate pushed into a corner where the porch's railings met the house's brick wall.

No, I suppose not. Tell me, Jake, have the authorities apprehended this Monsieur Eriq LeVisqueux fellow?" "Not yet." "Good, good," Mrs. Malvolio muttered to herself. "Excuse me?" said Grace. "I was just remarking that it's good that you three look so good.

Try Reiden," he said. "My God," Walter said, putting his own food aside and grabbing the pencil.

Walter suddenly became aware of a strange chill seeping into his lower body.

He took a sloshing step closer, fingers less than in inch from the undulating opening. That's when he heard a terrified scream.

first choice had been to rent a cabin in the woods, but that is too much nature. I don't do cabins in the woods because I have seen too many movies about cabins in the woods. If someone wants to murder me, they are going to have to get past reception.

A missing lover, a severed hand, but a body never discovered… An heiress and a bloodied gown…

there was apparent in all a sort of anxiety, a softening of the heart, and a consciousness of some great, unfathomable mystery being accomplished... the most solemn mystery in the world was being accomplished. Evening passed, night came on. And the feeling of suspense and softening of the heart before the unfathomable did not wane, but grew more intense. No one slept.

You can't understand it; for you men, who are free and make your own choice, it's always clear whom you love. But a girl's in a position of suspense, with all a woman's or maiden's modesty, a girl who sees you men from afar, who takes everything on trust,— a girl may have, and often has, such a feeling that she cannot tell what to say.

This," the Saint said to nobody in particular, "sounds like one of those stories that fellow Charteris might write.

The thick plottens.

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

In a novel you have to resist the urge to tell everything.

'Betrayed' starts off with Shane Gallagher rescuing Elena Reyes and a group of hostages from a madman with a gun. And as the story progresses and Shane's feelings for Elena blossom, his urge to protect her grows.

I was a huge 'Breaking Bad' fan. I just loved the whole thing. Always interesting, always urgent. The stakes were always high.

In many cases, the line between a thriller and a crime novel has become too blurred to be useful.