Unforeseen Twists Quotes

I'm not 100% sure 'Rebecca' qualifies as a thriller, given it's three parts screwed-up love story and two parts ghost-story-without-a-ghost, but the mystery at the heart of the novel is what happened to Maxim's first wife, the eponymous Rebecca, and it's unravelled with the pacing and finesse of the finest psychological thrillers out there.

The thing with '24' is that because it moves so much, it's a challenge, and sometimes things get revealed about these characters as you go.

Life sometimes doesn't work out exactly as we plan or hope for.

The world does not have tidy endings. The world does not have neat connections. It is not filled with epiphanies that work perfectly at the moment that you need them.

My writing has a lot of surprising twists.

When in the end, the day came on which I was going away, I learned the strange learning that things can happen which we ourselves cannot possibly imagine, either beforehand, or at the time when they are taking place, or afterwards when we look back on them.

I saw part of The Singing Detective on TV in New York. I said, Something is going on here.

I like to be surprised. The best writing is when it defies me, when it starts going a different way than I had planned.

Three children have become adults since a phone call with Jo Rowling, containing one small clue, persuaded me that there was more to Snape than an unchanging costume, and that even though only three of the books were out at that time, she held the entire massive but delicate narrative in the surest of hands.

'Don't Look Back' is my first YA contemporary mystery/thriller. It's been described as 'Black Swan' meets 'Pretty Little Liars'.

It is unlike the quintessential thriller where someone is up to something and the audience is speculating. 'Johnny Gaddaar' is the opposite of a thriller. In this case, the audience knows right from the outset what transpires and who the likely culprit is. It is a suspense caper.

I like shows that have some level of intelligence to them. When it's not as predictable, when you don't know what's coming at you.

An important part of any good mystery story like 'Original Sin' is that it's not just a game of 'Clue' with surprise after surprise after surprise, but the goal is to tell a story in the midst of that. Even once you know the solution to the mysteries, it's far from the whole story.

One thing 'Game of Thrones' has taught us all is to guard against too much emotional investment.

The sad vicissitude of things.

You didn't plan to write a story; it just happened. Well, it could be argued that the next thing you should do is find a hole to dig. Right? So you start digging a hole and then somebody brings a body along and puts it in. That's what a story must feel like to me. It's not that you say, "I want to write a story about a gravedigger." But you're walking along and "I don't know what I'm doing here in this story,' and - boop! a shovel. "Oh, interesting. Ok, what does one do with a shovel? Digs a hole. Why? I don't know yet. Dig the hole! Oh, look a body."

Because I never plan anything out ahead of time, I'm always in the process of learning about my characters. Without a biographical sketch to guide me, I discover things about my heroines as the stories unfold. Only in 'Body Double' did I discover that Maura's mother was a serial killer.

Life has played some funny tricks on me and taken me on a wild ride. How did I ever get into this wonderful mess that is my life?

My stories are often a little mysterious.

People's lives often don't turn out as they expect.

Gerald's Game' had such an impact on me when I read the book in college that I think I've actually, consciously or unconsciously, been incorporating elements of that story into my work ever since.

I'd like to classify my life as a romantic comedy. Unfortunately I feel it's probably more like a TV reality show.

For all I know, I am beginning with the ending. My page one can wind up a year later as page two hundred, if it's still even around.

I think that's where reality TV works - you don't know where it's going.

Life is crazy. It goes in directions that you could never guess.