Lisa Unger Quotes

William Goldman's Marathon Man was a novel that taught me about suspense. I was maybe 16 years old when I read it and I remember thinking, "You could put a gun to my head and I wouldn't put this book down." I loved that feeling - and want to give it others.

I think the thriller aspect of this film [Fifty Shades Darker] is what excited me most.

My story reflexes come less from fantasy or horror than from the darker sort of psychological thriller - not as plot-driven as most, rather more mood-driven. My interest in the supernatural is a complication - though I am less interested in ghosts than in people who see ghosts.

I thought 'Cabin in the Woods' was really incredible.

On The Others, very atmospheric and probably mysterious is how I would say it felt to be on the set. It felt just a little uneasy, the atmosphere that we were trying to capture.

I don't write that much horror. People tell me my books are scary, but they're not really; I don't go there.

From sublime affairs of state to the stark and vulgar popular culture of our own contemporary lives, let's make this descent into the lower registers together and recognize the good, nasty fun of 'Gone Girl,' Chicago writer Gillian Flynn's novel about the mysterious disappearance of a clever and deceptive young Midwestern housewife.

I've seen 'Absentia,' which was amazing. I loved 'Absentia.' I loved that for no money, he was able to make a movie about something that you never saw. You never saw the bad guys. That was amazing to me. You never saw what you were supposed to be afraid of; you just knew you were supposed to be afraid of it. It was a phenomenal movie.

As soon as people really get into the swamp - the scary swamp that is 'Fortitude' - there's no getting out of it. You need about six to seven episodes in to really go, 'This is what it's about.'

There was a little corner of his mind that was still his own, and light came through it, as though a chink in the dark: light out of the past. It was actually pleasant, I think, to hear a kindly voice agin, bringing up memories of wind, and trees, and sun on the grass, and such forgotten things.

There was something in the pages of these books that had the power to make him feel better about things, a life raft to cling to before the dark currents of memory washed him downstream again, and on brighter days, he could even see himself going on this way for some time. A small but passable life. And then, of course, the end of the world happened.

I've always been interested in themes of memory, paranoia, and revenge.

It doesn’t matter how many years go by, how much therapy I embark on, how much I try to achieve that elusive thing known as perspective, which is supposed to put all past wrongs into their rightful and diminished place, that happy place where all the talk is of lessons learned and inner peace. No one will ever understand the potency of my memories, which are so solid and vivid that I don’t need a psychiatrist to tell me they are driving me crazy. My subconscious has not buried them, my superego has not restrained them. They are front and center, they are going on right now.

[In The Dark Backward ] someone who has writer's block and kills people in A Cabin By The Lake. I guess he's a type of serial killer, but I don't know.

"Repulsion" for me was a really big movie where I was like, "OK, technically there's nothing scary going on here but I'm kind of terrified." Something so tiny was devolving this whole world. I guess I've always been obsessed with what I call the "epically small" in cinema, and that's how one tiny, little weird thing can just explode everything.

I love suspense movies, because in a sense they're the most dreamlike of any genre, and I'm sure I'll make another one.

Memory's so treacherous. One moment you're lost in a carnival of delights with poignant childhood aromas, the flashing neon on puberty, all that sentimental candyfloss. The next, it leads you somewhere you don't want to go.. Somewhere dark and cold, filled with the damp ambiguous shapes of things you'd hoped were forgotten.

The Past -- the dark unfathomed retrospect! The teeming gulf --the sleepers and the shadows! The past! the infinite greatness of the past! For what is the present after all but a growth out of the past?

[Season 4 of Sherlock Holmes will be] myopically dark. You're talking about the end of the universe darkness. You can't see in front of you and would walk into everything dark.

Bangkok 8 is one of the most startling and provocative mysteries that I've read in years. The characters are marvelously unique, the setting is intoxicating and the plot unwinds in dark illusory strands, reminiscent of Gorky Park. Once I started, I didn't want to put it down.

This dazzling, unput-downable debut novel proves beyond a doubt that Dan Wells has the gift. His teenage protagonist is as chilling as he is endearing. More John Wayne Cleaver, please.

"Silence Of The Lambs" is definitely very frightening.

If these walls could talk, I wonder what secrets they'd tell.

I define a thriller as a big-stakes, multiple-viewpoint novel involving suspense, action, and mystery, in which the reader doesn't know everything but usually knows more than any single character.