Quotes About Suspense

I like making movies that have some of the qualities of first-person shooter games. That was very important to me for the 'Bourne' franchise.

All heist movies are about gadgetry, ultimately, which feels very queer.

If you ask me a question, don't tell me what the question is in advance, 'cause I'd rather not know.

If you're making a horror film, it's very important that you have lots of quiet, suspensey, don't-know-what's-happening stuff before you get the big fright.

If you were writing a short ghost story, I would say start very quietly and go, 'One, two, three jump.' Or start with a jump and make it jumpier. But with a long story, it must have rises and falls.

The whole format of 'Game of Thrones' is that you just don't know what to expect.

Gangster films are exciting.

It's almost like a genre rule: Don't Open The Box.

I enjoy getting riled up, and nothing's gonna do that for you like a good scary movie.

There is a sweet little horror story that is only two sentences long: 'The last man on Earth sat along in a room. There was a knock at the door…' Two sentences and an ellipsis of three dots. The horror, of course, isn't in the story at all; it's in the ellipsis, the implication: what knocked at the door. Faced with the unknown, the human mind supplies something vaguely horrible.

But there are still good shows like 24, Boomtown and the Wire, the Shield.

I did not like 'The Hurt Locker.' It's a lazy way to make a movie, frankly. I could put you on the edge of your seat quite easily, and have you feel the tension for 2 hours, if every other scene practically is, 'Should we cut the red wire or the green wire?'

The modern horror audience is wise to our tricks this lets it in on the gag.

I think it's always wise to be concerned about any of the characters in 'Star Wars,' right?

'The Chill,' by Jason Starr and Mick Bertilorenzi, was both a wise and nervy choice to start the year: Starr's standalone novels, such as 'Hard Feelings' and 'The Follower,' sustain a mood not unlike the perpetual unscratchable itch on one's back, and go Highsmith-level deep into the sociopathic mind.

I love 'Paranormal Activity' because it scares you more with little effort. I like 'The Blair Witch Project' and the 'Omen' series and 'The Exorcist.' I love 'Exorcism of Emily Rose.'

What's really scary about the original 'Blair Witch' is that it doesn't really answer any questions, so what makes that ending so scary is you walk out feeling dirty because you don't even know what happened. It feels wrong.

'Paranormal 1' scared me because I didn't know if it was real or what. 'Blair Witch' was kind of scary for the same reason. It takes the voyeur element away and makes you think, 'Oh crap, this could really happen to me.'

'The Blair Witch Project' is a great movie.

The thing that interested me, there are so many filmmakers I admire - like David Lynch and Quentin Tarantino - they have these themes where there's not much going on, but they were suspenseful.

I've always been fascinated by how the past impacts the present. For the first half of my career as a novelist, I wrote psychological suspense mysteries. I wanted to be a therapist but was told that while I was a fine diagnostician, I would be a terrible therapist because I wanted to solve everyone's problems.

I deeply respect literature and expect to gain insight from a book and to identify emotionally with its characters. I therefore avoid reading suspense novels or science fiction.

I think most people, even if they say they hate horror movies, there's that feeling you get inside that you love. I mean, I love it. I love to have the hairs on the back of my neck stand up or get that chill up my spine.

You can, I think, have a quiet and steady protagonist and not run the risk of terminal dullness as long as exciting things happen to them and around them, and crime is the ideal genre for making this come about.