Quotes & Sayings About Suspense In Books

Mum, your heart is the same size as your fist,' she told me once in delight, and we both made our hands into fists and held them against our chests and bumped them together: hands as hearts. — Sanjida Kay

The taxi moved forward, carrying with it, the murder that Matt was. — Viveca Benoir

There was a red snake of blood symbolizing her life, and its end. — Viveca Benoir

The moor has always been part of my life. It's like a muse: the colours of the heather and the sky; how you can see the savagery of the wind in the way the dwarf pine trees are bent double, the bleak lines of the landscape in winter when everything save the moss and the grass are dead, stones like bones, poking through a thin skin of bilberry bushes, rushes reflected in black bog water. — Sanjida Kay

She closed her eyes briefly, feeling sick. Olivia had experienced strangulation before. Having to look directly into the face of the person who was killing you made the experience beyond awful. But there were worse things than that. Staring into the void of unresolved memory, living an eternal mystery, waking up night after night seeing the face of someone you desperately wanted to save but having not the slightest clue how to do it - all that was worse. If going through with this experience gave her the answers she needed, if it gave her peace, it would be well worth one-hundred-and-thirty seconds of fear and pain. — Leslie Parrish

What do you think books will look like 50 years from now. — M. Scott

Perhaps I was also afraid the little voice in the back of my head telling me I had no idea what I was doing was right. I didn't have any idea what I was doing; if I had, things would be different now. Although, thoughts like this led the other little voice inside my head to point out if I wasn't here, or if I didn't know what I was doing, Martin would be a chalk outline of some goo on the pavement. I sighed audibly and put my head on my desk. If only all the voices in my head could just get along. I laughed at the absurdity. I must be clinically insane. — G.K. Parks

They stole you from me. They took you away for seven years. Your entire lifetime. A life sentence. The waiting has been endless. The watching. The planning. Now, finally, I'm almost ready. I've got a few things to take care of and then we can be reunited. — Sanjida Kay

But there's also the fact that in my experience most of my readers are first and foremost plain old-fashioned readers. Good readers. They're not looking for cozy brand-name output and that means I don't have to give it to 'em. They're not lazy and have little patience with pre-fab beach-bag books or Oprah's opine du jour. They're questers.
They know that every now and then you're gonna get lucky and pure gold like King and Straub's Black House will simply drop into your lap at the local supermarket but after that, if your bent is horror and suspense fiction, you're gonna have to get your hands dirty and root around for more. Find a Ramsey Campbell or an Edward Lee. They expect diversity and search it out. They want what all good readers want - to be taken somewhere in a book or a story that's really worth visiting for a while. Maybe even worth thinking about after.
If that place happens to scare the hell out of you all the better. — Jack Ketchum

As for suspense, I like to write books that draw you into the hero's plight from the opening pages, where people put their lives on the line for something - a belief, a family member, the truth. — Andrew Gross

Brannagh Maloney had lived with disappearances all her life. They were as familiar to her as the changing of the Fundy tides. People who disappeared left cast-off shadows of themselves, murky tremblings that slunk out of corners on drizzly autumn afternoons. They lurked offstage, silent or sighing or reaching out to run a finger across her arm. They were the curtains fluttering in the window on a breezeless morning, the musty scent that arose when opening an abandoned cellar door.
LET THE SHADOWS FALL BEHIND YOU (Kunati Books) — Kathy-Diane Leveille

Never Let anyone tell you that you can't; show them that you can. — Gloria Mallette

Never give up, Never surrender!!!!!
If you think you can't, then you must, if you must, then you can..Tony Robbins — Paula V. Hardin

It's as if he's trodden in my footsteps, seen what I've seen, felt what I've felt, as I've criss-crossed the moors countless times. — Sanjida Kay

The dark edge of the moor and the Cow and Calf rock are crisp against the blue-black sky. I can't see anyone outside, watching us. As I shut the door behind me, I hear a noise. It came from the hall. I feel the hairs rise on the back of my neck. — Sanjida Kay

I can't believe I ever thought reading to her was a chore. I'd sit here some nights, fidgeting, thinking of all the things I needed to do, my voice hoarse, reluctant to read, 'just one more chapter,' wishing I could escape to my glass of wine. What did I have to do that was so important? What could be more important than reading my daughter a bedtime story? — Sanjida Kay

It is only a true mystery that can never be solved. — Paul Norris

Make no mistake, my darling. I am coming for you. I will take you back. — Sanjida Kay

I write what I want to write. Period. I don't write novels-for-hire using media tie-in characters, I don't write suspense novels or thrillers. I write horror. And if no one wants to buy my books, I'll just keep writing them until they do sell
and get a job at Taco Bell in the meantime. — Bentley Little

I closed the door and sank into my desk chair. My heart was pounding even harder. I felt like someone who had just staggered out of her car after an accident on a freeway. This was different from the cockroach and the books and the Barbie. I'd been injured. Someone had tried to physically harm me. — Kate White

... but I don't think I'm the only person who is tired of books and movies full of paper-doll characters you don't care about, who have no self-respect and no respect for anybody or any institution ... ..And I don't want to sound preachy or Victorian, but I'm tired of amorality in fiction and in real life. Immorality is a fascinating human dilemma that creates suspense for the readers and tension for the characters, but where is the tension in an amoral situation? When people have no personal code, nothing is threatening and nothing is meaningful. — Olive Ann Burns

It's quiet in the suburbs. It's too cold for people to be in their gardens; and it's not a thoroughfare so few cars drive by. I look past decaying roses and through the first flush of Michelmas daisies, blazing a glorious purple, into the darkened windows of the houses we walk by. Who lives here? Are they watching us? Did one of our neighbours do something seven years ago that he now regrets? How little we know of the people who surround us. — Sanjida Kay

I don't believe in writer's block. Who can function working seven days a week at at job. It's the same with writing. Take a break and let the words come to you. It rarely comes if you force it and if it does, you'll probably regret what you wrote down on paper. — Lillian R. Melendez

Sometimes surviving is all you can do — Emilee King

Open it up!" the officers ordered the men.
Two of them used their shovels to pry open the casket. When they flipped open the lid, they all cringed and backed away, holding their hands over their faces and groaning, but Kyle and Caleb were not close enough to see what the problem was.
As the wind shifted, the stench of death consumed them.
All eyes peered in to see the deceased, fully clad in an Amish dress and kapp. — Samantha Bayarr

He'd been kidnapped, betrayed, almost fed to a Diamondscale - yes, a Diamondscale - and now, just to top things off, he was on the run with the man who was responsible for the whole mess. — Ruth Ford Elward

Hello my darling,
I'm your real father. I've been searching for you ever since you were stolen from me. I love you so much.
Daddy — Sanjida Kay

A lot has changed, and now we're going off to fight a war neither of us wanted. So I'm asking you now, again, if you will bind yourself to me as my wife, now and forever.

Carison to Raven — Ruth Ford Elward

I think of my books now as suspense novels, usually with a love story incorporated. They're absolutely a lot harder to write than romances. They take more plotting and real character development. — Sandra Brown

Everything is an echo of something I once read.

Dream, hope, and celebrate life!

Love always comes back in a song.

One thing we all have in common is a love for food and drink.

Memories never die, and dreams never end!

What is time? — John Siwicki

So much for the bimbo alert; if she read books like that, then there was a light on upstairs, above the splendid front porch. — C.I. Dennis

Feel it, deal with it, then throw it away — Reyna Hawk

Two days of wedded bliss and dead dragons. Any regrets yet?"

"Not a one. — Ruth Ford Elward

There were adventure stories supplied with cloths for mopping your brow, thrillers containing pressed leaves of soothing valerian to be sniffed when the suspense became too great, and books with stout locks sealed by the Atlantean censorship authorities ("Sale permitted, reading prohibited!"). One shop sold nothing but 'half' works that broke off in the middle because their author had died while writing them; another specialised in novels whose protagonists were insects. I also saw a Wolperting shop that sold nothing but books on chess and another patronised exclusively by dwarfs with blond beards, all of whom wore eye-shades. — Walter Moers

There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time. — Kurt Vonnegut

She would keep playing the role of the winner as long as the audience believed her. — Mary Papas

Look here look there
Look everywhere
For you have
Not a moment to spare — Frank Julius

He places the skull in the palm of my hand. There are four canines; the top two are so long and curved I can feel them pricking my skin. There's a green tinge round the eye socket and in a fine line across the cranium. I'm not sure what animal it's from.
'Stoat,' Harris says, as if I've spoken out loud. 'They hunt grouse and partridge. I found it behind my house. I buried the body in the furze until it was just bone.'
His hand is still beneath mine, supporting it. I think of him seeing the small dead creature and digging a tiny grave for it. Planning ahead for all those months just so he'd see the skeleton. Or maybe he severed the animal's head and that was the only part he buried.
'It's been waiting for you all this time. Like I have. — Sanjida Kay

There were fat cats and skinny cats. The long-tailed and the bobbed. The daring young leapers, and the old windowsill sleepers. Balls of waddling fluff, smooth-coated prowlers, and hairless ones that looked fragile and wise. The tiger-striped, the ring-tailed, and the ones with matching coloured socks and mittens. There were tabbies and calicos. Manx and Persians. Siamese and Bombay. Ragdolls and Birmans. Maine Coons and Russian Blues. There were Snowshoes and Somalis, Tonkinese and Turkish, and many, many more. Brown and beige and orange and grey and black and white and silver cats, each with gleaming eyes of emerald, or sapphire, or amber. A rainbow of precious stones. — Brooke Burgess

Listen to me you piece of shit, if you ever give the press information about me, my parents or even breathe a word about me to anyone ever again, I swear to god I will make it my mission to make your life a living hell. And, believe me I'll do it with a smile on my face the whole time. You're a worthless excuse for a Detective and everyone here knows it. You've screwed your way to the top and backstabbed Gena to get into your Captain's good books. Well look around you honey, you're a real star. No one stopped Gena or me taking you on. I've currently got you in a hold, where I could snap your neck if I wanted to, and not one person is stepping forward to help you. Yeah, you've really made it. - Stephanie Carovella to Sandra Barton — Nina D'Angelo

When I made the leap from category romance to larger single-title books, I was encouraged to make the book 'big,' and suspense was allowed. Over the years, I've been able to write the kind of books I love, with a balance of suspense and romance. How lucky am I? — Lisa Jackson

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

Payne sought clarification. "Vertical or horizontal?"
"Horizontal, of course."
"Sorry but I can't help you."
"Will you pipe down for a minute? Naturally she was dead since I work at a cemetery. Her face struck a chord though. So, I rummaged around in the old Rory memory bank, and Emily is what rings a bell. Didn't we go to school with an Emily? Tenth or eleventh grade, if I recall it correctly. — Ed Lynskey

You and I. We're going back. People are dying because of this beast. It must be stopped. And we will take the dragon this time, and water the ground with its blood. — Ruth Ford Elward

There isn't any particular relationship between all the messages, except that the author has chosen them carefully, so that, when seen all at once, they produce an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and deep. There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at once. — Kurt Vonnegut

...it was important to hit the ground running and not fall into the lifestyle traps of newly found free time. — Alex Adam

The shriek cut thinly though the drizzling dimness, holding for a long moment. At last it broadened and dropped to the old. — Natalie Babbitt

The dragon took his other arm. But he is still a dragonslayer, no matter what. — Ruth Ford Elward

He watched her walk away with a sway in her hips that tossed her long, milk-chocolate-colored ponytail from side to side. — Meg Knight

Elizabeth, just like our queen. I'm Gabriel Storm. — Magda Alexander

If you'd died on me, I would've taken it out on your corpse."

Raven Heartstone Celenti to Paladin Carison Destine — Ruth Ford Elward

Evie is our beautiful, dark-haired, green-eyed child,' I say. I can hear the tremor in my voice. 'Like many seven-year-old girls, she's obsessed with princesses. We think she looks more like a fairy. She loves Lego and painting. She laughs easily. She has pretend tea parties in a tree in our garden and invites all her dolls. She wants to be an artist when she grows up. Please find her. Please bring her back to us. We miss her beyond measure. She is the love of our life. — Sanjida Kay

Ten books in and the Red Stone Security series is still going strong because of you, my wonderful readers. Thank you. — Katie Reus

Where I'm taking you, no one will ever find us. We'll have all the time in the world for you to grow to love me as much as I love you. — Sanjida Kay