“My feeling of the whole genre, of the terror tale, is this: The best thing that you can do for the readers in this field is to terrify them. That's a head reaction. It is something that is intellectual, it happens in your mind. It is the sort of effect that Edgar Allen Poe gets in his story, The Telltale Heart, when he starts talking about a quick beating sound, like a watch. There is something about that that appeals to the mind more than anything else. The fact that this fellow is hearing the heart, the dismembered heart under the floorboard beating and beating, and the police are there and nobody can hear it but him. It goes on and on and it gets louder and louder. That's terror!”
— Stephen King, An Interview with Stephen King
Tagged: Terror, Stephen King, Horror, Edgar Allen Poe, The Telltale Heart, suspense
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An Interview with Stephen King web.archive.org

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