Fear is hard to conjure in a reader. Unlike movies, which have music and camera angles to build suspense, books of course only have their words. For that reason, making a literary villain truly scary requires verbal precision. In other words, your villain must talk the talk. Below are ten villains, and their scariest quotes that are so effective, they actually make readers shiver in fear.
1. “I’m utterly insane and I like to dissect girls.”
– Patrick Bateman, American Psycho
2. “Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf”
– Count Olaf, A Series of Unfortunate Events
3. “They ALL float down here. When you’re down here with us, you’ll float too!”
– Pennywise, IT
4. “Wendy? Darling? Light, of my life. I’m not gonna hurt ya. I’m just going to bash your brains in.”
– Jack Torrence, The Shining
5. I’m right and you’re wrong, I’m big and you’re small, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
– Trunchbull, Matilda
6. “I wanted to end the world, but I’ll settle for ending yours.”
– James Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes
7. “I WILL have order!”
– Umbridge, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
8. “I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.”
– Hanibal Lector, The Silence of the Lambs
9. “She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms, she was always Lolita.”
– Humbert, Lolita
10. “You do not exist.”
– O’Brian, 1984
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