EN
  • Deutsche Deutsche
  • English English
  • Français Français
  • Русский Русский

Thriller Quotes (displaying: 1 - 30 of 65 quotes )

  back to themes
Theme:
Thrillers are like life, more like life than you are.
Graham Greene
Theme:
Thrillers have been traditionally very masculine books; the women characters often rather decorative.
Ken Follet
Theme:
'Polisse' is the sort of cop thriller where people do things like angrily bang on a desktop or sweep everything off it. If it happens once, it must happen six times. But every time it did, I wanted to stand up and cheer, which I've never wanted to do for any such thriller.
Wesley Morris
Mysteries and thrillers are not the same things, though they are literary siblings. Roughly put, I would say the distinction is that mysteries emphasize motive and psychology whereas thrillers rely more heavily on action and plot.
Jon Meacham
Theme:
Diesel was about to place the cockroach on the casket, and my purse rocked out with “Thriller” again. “Excuse me,” I said. And I answered my phone. “I’m beginning to appreciate Hatchet,” Wulf said to Diesel. Diesel smiled. “She has her moments. And she makes cupcakes.” I disconnected and stuffed my phone into my pocket. “Well?” Diesel asked. “It was Glo. Her broom ran away again.” “I would appreciate it if we could get on with this without more interruption,” Wulf said in his eerily quiet voice, his eyes riveted on mine. “Lighten up,” I said to Wulf. “Glo lost her broom again. This is a big deal for her. And what have we got here anyway…a dead guy and a Stone. Do you think they can wait for three minutes longer?” Diesel gave a bark of laughter, and Wulf looked like her was trying hard not to sigh. - Diesel, Lizzy, and Wulf, page 306-307.
Janet Evanovich
In a short story by Chekhov or a novel by Balzac he found mysteries which, so far as he was aware, did not exist in any spy thriller. 35
Amos Oz
But those who read thrillers are an impatient race. They chafe at scenic rhapsodies and want to get on to the rough stuff.
P. G. Wodehouse
Theme:
I'm equally sure, however, that I won't walk into a lamp-post while reading {literature}, like I did with {a legal thriller} all those years ago; you don't walk into lamp-posts when you're reading literary novels, do you?
Nick Hornby
Theme:
Readers will recall that the little evidence collected seemed to point to the strange and confusing figure of an unidentified Air Force pilot whose body was washed ashore on a beach near Dieppe three months later. Other traces of his ‘mortal remains’ were found in a number of unexpected places: in a footnote to a paper on some unusual aspects of schizophrenia published thirty years earlier in a since defunct psychiatric journal; in the pilot for an unpurchased TV thriller, ‘Lieutenant 70’; and on the record labels of a pop singer known as The Him — to instance only a few. Whether in fact this man was a returning astronaut suffering from amnesia, the figment of an ill-organized advertising campaign, or, as some have suggested, the second coming of Christ, is anyone’s guess.
J. G. Ballard
Theme:
The people of former times [...] they're dead that's the only thing they have over the living but in their own day they were just as sickening. Picturesqueness: I don't fall for that not for one minute. Stinking filthy dirty washing cabbage-stalks what a pretentious fool you have to be to go into such ecstasies over that! And it's the same thing everywhere all the time whether they're stuffing themselves with chips paella or pizza it's the same crew a filthy crew the rich who trample over you the poor who hate you for your money the old who dodder the young who sneer the men who show off the women who open their legs. I'd rather stay at home reading a thriller although they've become so dreary nowadays. The telly too what a clapped-out set of fools! I was made for another planet altogether I mistook the way.
Simone de Beauvoir
Theme:
The black bird cocked its head to one side, and then said, in a voice like stones being struck, 'You shadow man.' I'm Shadow,' said Shadow. The bird hopped up onto the fawn's rump, raised its head, ruffled its crown and neck feathers. It was enormous and its eyes were black beads. There was something intimidating about a bird that size, this close. Says he will see you in Kay-ro.' tokked the raven. Shadow wondered which of Odin's ravens this was: Huginn or Munnin, Memory or Thought. Kay-ro?' he asked. In Egypt.' How am I going to go to Egypt?' Follow Mississippi. Go south. Find Jackal.' Look,' said Shadow, 'I don't want to seem like I'm-- Jesus, look...' he paused. Regrouped. He was cold, standing in a wood, talking to a big black bird who was currently brunching on Bambi. 'Okay. What I'm trying to say is I don't want mysteries.' Mysteries,' agreed the bird helpfully. What I want is explanations. Jackal in Kay-ro. This does not help me. It's a line from a bad spy thriller.
Neil Gaiman
Theme:
The intimacy of the detail - why The Silence of the Lambs is quite possibly the Thriller Writer's bible.
Thomas Harris
Theme:
She kept to herself. Most afternoons I caught a glimpse of her in the shadows of B deck, in a deck chair. She always had in her possession a copy of The Magic Mountain, but no one ever saw her reading it. Miss Lasqueti consumed mostly crime thrillers, which constantly seemed to disappoint her. I suspect that for her the world was more accidental than any book's plot. Twice I saw her so irritated by a mystery that she half rose from the shadow of her chair and flung the paperback over the railing into the sea.
Michael Ondaatje
Theme:
Anything that doesn't fit this mode has been shoved into an area of lesser solemnity called 'genre fiction,' and it is here that the spy thriller and the crime story and the adventure story and the supernatural tale and the science fiction, however excellently written, must reside, sent to their rooms, as it were, for the misdemeanor of being enjoyable in what is considered a meretricious way. They invent, and we all know they invent, at least up to a point, and they are, therefore, not about 'real life,' which ought to lack coincidences and weirdness and action-adventure, unless the adventure story is about war, of course, where anything goes, and they are, therefore, not solid.
Margaret Atwood
Theme:
Ok now--I don't read "all the time." Remember, that these ratings are over quite a while. I'll try to put in some comments over what I've been reading lately. I like Vince Flynn's spy/thrillers. Also, check out Umberto Eco's one "On Beauty"--not the precise title, but great art/comments. Also, Sophie's World if you like a pretty unusual story with philosophy mixed in.
Umberto Eco
Theme:
I read a lot of thrillers, especially American crime novels.
Kate Mosse
In a thriller, the camera's an active narrator, or can be.
John McTiernan
Theme:
Before I did any action movies, I did a couple of thrillers. That's hung around for me.
John McTiernan
Theme:
I don't like writing straight-up thrillers. I like writing about families hurled into crisis and danger - soccer moms and regular dads and husbands who might have to rescue their daughters or who are, say, hedge fund managers and have one foot on the sidelines watching their kids and the other in nefarious cover-ups and conspiracies.
Andrew Gross
Theme:
I went see the horror thriller, Hannibal. I am a massive fan of Anthony Hopkins. He is superb in the film.
David Ginola
The thriller is the most popular literary genre of the 20th century.
Ken Follet
Theme:
Movies have influenced all writers, not just thriller writers.
Ken Follet
Theme:
An awful lot of thriller writers write women rather badly. So just doing it OK gets a lot of credit.
Ken Follet
I think mystery writers and thriller writers - whatever genre you want to call it - are taking on some of the biggest, most interesting kind of socioeconomic issues around in a really interesting, compelling way.
Gillian Flynn
Theme:
To answer that I have to describe what I think is my responsibility as a thriller writer: To give my readers the most exciting roller coaster ride of a suspense story I can possibly think of.
Jeffery Deaver
For me a thriller is a very carefully structured story.
Jeffery Deaver
Theme:
I love the idea of a movie hero in a thriller who is able to get ahead by just his brilliance, and not with a gun or by being an action hero.
Danny Strong
I have never done a thriller, and it will just be really fun for me to heave and pant and run and climb and break windows and scream every once in a while.
Kate Hudson
Theme:
My mother could never understand why I didn't write a thriller, which I've finally done.
Harry Mathews
Theme:
If you write thrillers or mysteries or horror fiction or quote-unquote speculative fiction, men might read you, and the 'Times' might notice you.
Jennifer Weiner