120 Suspense Quotes

Following is our list of suspense quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about suspenseful.

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Famous Suspense Quotes

Suspense is like a woman. The more left to the imagination, the more the excitement. — Alfred Hitchcock

The suspense is terrible. I hope it'll last. - Gene Wilder

The suspense is terrible. I hope it'll last. — Gene Wilder

This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last. — Oscar Wilde

Mystery is an intellectual process... But suspense is essentially an emotional process. — Alfred Hitchcock

Apprehension, uncertainty, waiting, expectation, fear of surprise, do a patient more harm than any exertion. — Florence Nightingale

The strongest human emotion is fear. It's the essence of any good thriller that, for a little while, you believe in the boogeyman. — John Carpenter

One feels the excitement of hearing an untold story. — John Hope Franklin

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

Show me a character whose life arouses my curiosity, and my flesh begins crawling with suspense. — Fawn M. Brodie

There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it. - Alfred Hitchcock

There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it. — Alfred Hitchcock

The still must tease with the promise of a story the viewer of it itches to be told. — Cindy Sherman

The idea of waiting for something makes it more exciting — Andy Warhol

Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind. — William Shakespeare

Fear is the spice that makes it interesting to go ahead. — Daniel Boone

The secret to humor is surprise. — Aristotle

Short Suspense Quotes

  • It is not disbelief that is dangerous to our society; it is belief. — George Bernard Shaw
  • Good composition is like a suspension bridge - each line adds strength and takes none away. — Robert Henri
  • Any war that requires the suspension of reason as a necessity for support is a bad war. — Norman Mailer
  • Even cowards can endure hardship; only the brave can endure suspense. — Mignon McLaughlin
  • Be the hero of your own story. — Joe Rogan
  • Faith means the purposeful suspension of critical thinking. It’s nothing to be admired. — Bill Maher
  • The more you can create that magic bubble, that suspension of disbelief, for a while, the better. — Edward Norton
  • (on Warner Brothers) This studio has more suspensions than the Golden Gate Bridge. — Humphrey Bogart
  • Suspense is torture ... but delightful--or there'd be no gambling in the world. — Ada Leverson
  • Writing is a suspension of life in order to re-create life — John McPhee

Suspense Image Quotes

Suspension Quotes

Above all trust in the slow work of God. Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be. Give our Lord the benefit of believing that His hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete. — Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

When men are the most sure and arrogant they are commonly the most mistaken, giving views to passion without that proper deliberation and suspense which alone can secure them from the grossest absurdities. — David Hume

Whenever the Lord holds us in suspense, and delays his aid, he is not therefore asleep, but, on the contrary, regulates all His works in such a manner that he does nothing but at the proper time. — John Calvin

I like to compare the holiday season with the way a child listens to a favorite story. The pleasure is in the familiar way the story begins, the anticipation of familiar turns it takes, the familiar moments of suspense, and the familiar climax and ending. — Fred Rogers

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

By skepticism . . . we arrive first at suspension of judgment, and second at freedom from disturbance. — Sextus Empiricus

The (Academy Award) ceremonies are a two-hour meat parade, a public display with contrived suspense for economic reasons. — George C. Scott

The idea that the Christian god is just, is directly contradicted by the idea that the Christian god is merciful. Perfect justice and any mercy are necessarily directly in contradiction, because mercy is a suspension of justice. — Matt Dillahunty

Musicals are, by nature, theatrical, meaning poetic, meaning having to move the audience's imagination and create a suspension of disbelief, by which I mean there's no fourth wall. — Stephen Sondheim

I think so, Silence of the Lambs was a great, suspenseful thriller and I would expect Red Dragon to be similar. And I think it's very character driven. — Emily Watson

Suspenseful Quotes

The courage to imagine the otherwise is our greatest resource, adding color and suspense to all our life. — Daniel J. Boorstin

In a script, you have to link various episodes together, you have to generate suspense and you have to assemble things - through editing, for example. It's exactly the same in architecture. Architects also put together spatial episodes to make sequences. — Rem Koolhaas

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

Women can say anything they want to men, or blacks to whites, with impunity. But strong words in the other direction can bring down on students the wrath of the campus thought police - as well as punishments that can extend to suspension or expulsion. — Thomas Sowell

An outline is crucial. It saves so much time. When you write suspense, you have to know where you're going because you have to drop little hints along the way. With the outline, I always know where the story is going. So before I ever write, I prepare an outline of 40 or 50 pages. — John Grisham

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

Vaguely conscious of that great suspense in which we live, we find our escape from its sterile, annihilating reality in many dreams, in religion, passion, art. — Arthur Symons

Good composition is like a suspension bridge; each line adds strength and takes none away... Making lines run into each other is not composition. There must be motive for the connection. Get the art of controlling the observer – that is composition. — Robert Henri

People keep coming up to me and asking, 'How does it feel to be banned for life?' Banned for life. I wasn't banned for life. There was never a word of suspension, probation or ban in that agreement. It was never meant to be part of it. — George Steinbrenner

If the film isn't suspenseful, i.e. the pressure cooker situation of what's going on in the movie, if that's not part of it, if the threat of violence and the temperature isn't always going up a notch every scene or so, then the movie is going to be boring. It's not going to work. — Quentin Tarantino

Suspension Of Disbelief Quotes

The generation of atmosphere, the aura of the uncanny, is one of the most important secrets of magic. It contributes to the willing suspension of disbelief, the feeling that, within the circle, or in the presence of the magical shrine, anything may happen. — Doreen Valiente

That willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

It is now life and not art that requires the willing suspension of disbelief. — Lionel Trilling

I guess love is the real suspension of disbelief. — Melissa Bank

What do you know? Haven't you heard of suspension of disbelief? — Ed Wood

It's absolutely fine when Wile E. Coyote walks in with a band-aid on his head, after a 3,000-pound rock is dropped on him. That is what Ed Wood meant by the suspension of disbelief. — Johnny Depp

Every little thing that people know about you as a person impedes your ability to achieve that kind of terrific suspension of disbelief that happens when an audience goes with an actor and character he's playing. — Edward Norton

Sometimes I read a script and it's obvious from early on that it's one where the suspension of disbelief has to develop strongly from page one. Some are more reality-based. — Gillian Anderson

I'm not a moron, but science fiction to me requires a suspension of disbelief and honest curiosity or fascination in that kind of bullshit. I've just never been able to make that jump, really. I like things to be more organic. — Marc Maron

When it comes to acting, people talk about the suspension of disbelief that you ask of the audience. Before that starts, you have to, as an actor, suspend your own disbelief. — Helena Bonham Carter

Suspense Novels Quotes

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

Absolutely breathtaking, nail-biting, and edge-of-your-seat. Michael Koryta is a master at maintaining suspense and a hell of a good writer. THOSE WHO WISH ME DEAD is one of the best chase-and-escape novels you’ll read this year-or any other year. The pace never lets up. — Nelson Demille

You are the Hero of your own Story. — Joseph Campbell

In suspense novels even subplots about relationships have to have conflict. — Jeffery Deaver

One key to the distinction between mystery and suspense writing involves the relative positions of hero and reader. In the ideal mystery novel, the readers is two steps behind the detective.... The ideal suspense reader, on the other hand, is two steps ahead of the hero. — Carolyn Wheat

Suspense is very important. Even though this is humor and they're short stories, that theory of building suspense is still there. — Sergio Aragones

Poison Pill is a great reading. The novel ranges from Russian oligarchs to the American worlds of drug research and the equity markets, all of it in a mode of high suspense. — Scott Turow

I like to believe my suspense novels marry the strong characters from my romance writing past, with the twisty, clever plots of my mystery writing present. — Lisa Gardner

Before I became a suspense novelist, I wrote romantic suspense as Alicia Scott. — Lisa Gardner

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

Suspicion Quotes

For the record, prejudices can kill, and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own for the children, and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to the Twilight Zone. — Rod Serling

But why should we not place implicit confidence in God and rely upon His word of promise? Is anything too hard for the Lord? Has His word of promise ever failed? Then let us not entertain any unbelieving suspicions of His future care of us. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but not so His promises. — Arthur W. Pink

You English are like mad bulls... you see red everywhere! What on earth has come over you, to heap on us such suspicion as is unworthy of a great nation. I regard this as a personal insult... You make it uncommonly difficult for a man to remain friendly to England. — Wilhelm II

Dirt used to be a badge of honor. Dirt used to look like work. But we've scrubbed the dirt off the face of work and consequently we've created this suspicion of anything that's too dirty. — Mike Rowe

Pure love and suspicion cannot dwell together: at the door where the latter enters, the former makes its exit. — Alexandre Dumas

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. — American Proverbs

Fulfillment of Central Committee directives became Stalin’s mantra, and suspicion of non-fulfillment, his obsession. — Stephen Kotkin

Suspicion is a heavy armor and with its weight it impedes more than it protects. — Robert Burns

Beware: Ignorance Protects itself. Ignorance Promotes suspicion. Suspicion Engenders fear. Fear quails, Irrational and blind, Or fear looms, Defiant and closed. Blind, closed, Suspicious, afraid, Ignorance Protects itself, And protected, Ignorance grows. — Octavia Butler

I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity, and her flaming self respect. And it's these things I'd believe in, even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she wasn't all she should be. I love her and it is the beginning of everything. — F. Scott Fitzgerald

People Writing About Suspense

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Read quotes by Alfred Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock

120 2222
Read quotes by Gene Wilder

Gene Wilder

74 6242
Read quotes by Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde
quotes on love, love and marriage and life

1908 25561
Read quotes by Florence Nightingale

Florence Nightingale
quotes on nursing, compassion and education

144 1504
Read quotes by John Carpenter

John Carpenter
quotes on politics, religion and government

55 228
Read quotes by John Hope Franklin

John Hope Franklin
quotes on slavery, education and freedom

12 164

More Suspense Quotes

With the simple suspension of gold redeemability, governments’ war efforts were no longer limited to the money that they had in their own treasuries, but extended virtually to the entire wealth of the population. For as long as the government could print more money and have that money accepted by its citizens and foreigners, it could keep financing the war. Previously, under a monetary system where gold as money was in the hands of the people, government only had its own treasuries to sustain its war effort, along with any taxation or bond issues to finance the war. This made conflict limited, and lay at the heart of the relatively long periods of peace experienced around the world before the twentieth century. — Saifedean Ammous

Behind it was that vast suspension bridge which always troubles me because it reminds me that in this mechanized age I am as little able to understand my environment as any primitive woman who thinks that a waterfall is inhabited by a spirit, and indeed less so, for her opinion might from a poetical point of view be correct. — Rebecca West

Death - Death can be faced, dealt with, adjusted to, outlived. It's the not knowing that destroys interminably... This being suspended in suspense; waiting - weightless, How does one face the faceless, adjust to nothing? Waiting implies something to wait for. Is there? There is One. One who knows... I rest my soul on that. — Ruth Graham

Scepticism is an ability, or mental attitude, which opposes appearances to judgments in any way whatsoever, with the result that,owing to the equipollence of the objects and reasons thus opposed we are brought firstly to a state of mental suspense and next to a state of "unperturbedness" or quietude. — Sextus Empiricus

There isn’t any particular relationship between 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 one time. — Kurt Vonnegut

It [horror genre] never dies. It just keeps getting re­invented and it always will. Horror is a universal language; we're all afraid. We're born afraid, we're all afraid of things: death, disfigurement, loss of a loved one. Everything that I'm afraid of, you're afraid of and vice versa. So everybody feels fear and suspense. — John Carpenter

I've mis-signed many a book Rollins or Clemens. My readers quickly become aware. Booksellers will often promote me under both names, and I do plug both at signings. Generally, the fantasy reader has no problem going into the suspense genre. It's harder for the typical suspense reader to go the other direction. — James Rollins

By a declaration of rights, I mean one which shall stipulate freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of commerce against monopolies, trial by juries in all cases, no suspensions of the habeas corpus, no standing armies. These are fetters against doing evil which no honest government should decline. — Thomas Jefferson

Your silence exists as does my self gathering. But so does the almost absolute silence of the world's dawning. In such suspension, before every utterance on earth, there is a cloud, an almost immobile air. The plants already breathe, while we still ask ourselves how to speak to each other, without taking breath away from them. — Luce Irigaray

In Conclusion

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