Iris Johansen Quotes

I am more of a suspense writer. A mystery writer solves mysteries. I am a 'high suspense' writer.

The stories I read or get attracted to have a kind of thrill element, or a crime.

I think, primarily, we love spy thrillers, and I think, instinctively, we love the tension that those thrillers can bring.

I read what I like to write: romantic suspense. I also love thrillers and novels of suspense, but I can't handle extreme violence and torture.

I'd love to make a thriller.

If you are writing a thriller with violence in it, the ending must be violent. You are delivering a promise to your reader.

I think that in order for anything to work on television, you have to have conflict. Nothing can be too happy or it's boring. People don't want to watch that - they want to watch things that are exciting and dangerous and sexy and have tension.

That's why I love crime novels so much: When I write a crime novel, the conflict is built in.

One of my favorite authors to read is Eric Ambler, who helped pioneer the form of realistic suspense novels.

I like doing thrillers.

I like a good old thriller.

I like a good suspense thriller when it's smart and well done like 'Armed Response' is.

With thrillers, I tend to concentrate on the research and pace more than the characters.

There are other ways to create tension and drama than to have somebody stabbed through the back with a sword.

I grew up on courtroom dramas, and I really love the feel of a dramatic thriller.

For the things that I've been involved in, most of it has really been - it's been a mixture of action and then drama.

I got halfway through 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.' I don't get it at all. What's the big thrill? It's boring.

I think you need humour and a sense of fun, which is what I try to bring to my books to leaven the danger and action. The ones that really transcend the genre always have a great laugh in them, such as 'Fright Night,' 'Lost Boys,' 'American Werewolf in London' - just to name a few.

Crime stories are our version of sitting round a camp fire and telling tales. We enjoy being scared under safe circumstances. That's why there's no tradition of crime writing in countries that have wars.

Detective fiction could not have existed without Edgar Allan Poe.

Every thriller needs a good bad guy; without a bad guy, there's no thriller.

All you need for a movie is a gun and a girl.

Just because it's got a gun doesn't make it a crime novel, and just because there's a horse doesn't make it a western.

Every story needs an element of suspense - or it's lousy.

I like thrillers a lot. There's a lot of discipline connected to them. You can't be as freewheeling as you are with character pieces.