Gillian Flynn Quotes

At one point, she probably liked the idea of a daughter. When she was a girl, I bet she daydreamed of being a mother, of coddling, of licking her child like a milk-swelled cat. She has that voraciousness about children. She swoops in on them. Even I, in public, was a beloved child.

No one I've loved has ever not had an agenda.

There might be a space too, for this. The feel of killing, there might be an empty spot just waiting to be filled.

It infects you. It ruined me.

I don't want to panic them,' I said. 'If we don't

I've always thought I could commit the perfect murder. People who get caught get caught because they don't have patience; they refuse to plan.

He did apologize profusely. (Does anyone do anything profusely except apologize? Sweat, I guess.)

When I was fourteen, I thought a lot about killing myself - it's a hobby today, but at age fourteen it was a vocation. On a September morning, just after school started, I'd gotten Diane's .44 Magnum and held it, babylike, in my lap for hours. What an indulgence it would be, to just blow off my head, all my mean spirits disappearing with a gun blast, like blowing a seedy dandelion apart. But I thought about Diane, and her coming home to my small torso and a red wall, and I couldn't do it. It's probably why I was so hateful to her, she kept me from what I wanted the most.

It was an itinerary for an alternate life. If things had gone according to my wife's vision, yesterday she would have hovered near me as I read this poem, watching me expectantly, the hope emanating from her like a fever: *Please get this. Please get me.*

There are few phrases that annoy me more than I won't bite. The only line that pisses me off faster is when some drunk, ham-faced dude in a bar sees me trying to get past him and barks: Smile,it can't be that bad! Yeah, actually, it can, jackwad.

Always have a backup plan to the backup plan.

I'm not someone who can be depended one five days a week. Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday? I don't even get out of bed five days in a row-I often don't remember to eat five days in a row. Reporting to a workplace, where I should need to stay for eight hours-eight big hours outside my home- was unfeasible.

Never go back to a man with fresh bruises. Don't give him the satisfaction,

And I didn't realize. I didn't take into account. Just. You know, this is real to you. I mean, I know that, we know that, but we don't at the same time. We really just never will. I don't think. Totally get that. You spend so much time discussing and debating it becomes ... But. Well. I'm sorry.

If you can't take care of me while I'm alive, you have made me dead anyway.

Because everyone loves the Dead Girl.

You're a man who cheats on his wife, you can't ever undo that.

This morning he was stroking my hair and asking what else he could do for me, and I said: "My gosh, Nick, why are you so wonderful to me?"
He was supposed to say: YOU DESERVE IT. I LOVE YOU. But he said, "Because I feel sorry for you."
"Why?"
"Because every morning you have to wake up and be you."
I really, truly wish he hadn't said that. I keep thinking about it. I can't stop.

Don't fret, we'll sort this out: the true and the not true and the might as well be true.

In New York it's not three or four A.M. that's the quiet time - there are too many bar stragglers, calling out to each other as they collapse into taxis, yelping into their cell phones as they frantically smoke that one last cigarette before bed. Five A.M., that's the best time, when the clicking of your heels on the sidewalk sounds illicit. All the people have been put away in their boxes, and you have the whole place to yourself.

Everyone is nice. They are literally as nice as they can be.

Lately, I've been leaning towards kindness.

- Camille Preaker

Sometimes it is all too loud. T

I knew you could do it, I knew you could, Libby," she mumbled into my hair, warm and smoky.
"Do what?"
"Try just a little harder.

I went into Andie's bathroom, took a piss, looked at myself in the mirror, and made myself say it: You are a cheater. You have failed one of the most basic male tests. You are not a good man. And when that didn't bother me, I thought: You're really not a good man.

That was pure, dumb Cool Girl bullshit. What a cunt. Again, I don't get it: If you let a man cancel plans or decline to do things for you, you lose. You don't get what you want. It's pretty clear. Sure, he may be happy, he may say you're the coolest girl ever, but he's saying it because he got his way. He's calling you a Cool Girl to fool you! That's what men do: They try to make it sound like you are the Cool Girl so you will bow to their wishes. Like a car salesman saying, How much do you want to pay for this beauty? when you didn't agree to buy it yet. That awful phrase men use: "I mean, I know you wouldn't mind if I ... " Yes, I do mind. Just say it. Don't lose, you dumb little twat.

He took away chunks of me with blasé swipes: my independence, my pride, my esteem. I gave, and he took and took. He Giving Treed me out of existence.

That whore, he picked that little whore over me. He killed my soul, which should be a crime.

That have never known inhabitants, or homes that have known owners and seen them ejected, the house standing triumphantly voided, humanless.

Do not antagonize the cops, I told myself. Repeat if necessary: Do not antagonize the cops.

It seemed like a joke, how much all of these dudes looked alike, like living was so hard it just erased your features, rubbed out anything distinctive.

Blame the economy, blame bad luck, blame my parents, blame your parents, blame the Internet, blame people who use the Internet.

Every time people said I was pretty, I thought of everything ugly swarming beneath my clothes.

I spent the rest of my day picturing how I'd kill Amy. It was all I could think of: finding a way to end her. Me smashing in Amy's busy, busy brain. I had to give Amy her due: I may have been dozing the past few years, but I was fucking wide awake now. I was electric again, like I had been in the early days of our marriage...
Andie had screwed me over, Marybeth had turned against me, Go had lost a crucial measure of faith. Boney had trapped me. Amy had destroyed me. I poured a drink. I took a slug, tightened my fingers around the curves of the tumbler, then hurled it at the wall, watched the glass burst into fireworks, heard the tremendous shatter, smelled the cloud of bourbon. Rage in all five senses. Those fucking bitches.

Because for Amy, love was like drugs or booze or porn: There was no plateau. Each exposure needed to be more intense than the last to achieve the same result.

Worries find you easily enough without inviting them.

It doesn't matter, because I have found my match. It's Nick, laid-back and calm, smart and fun and uncomplicated. Untortured, happy. Nice. Big penis.

DNA to me was some sort of magical element, some glowing goo that was always getting people out of prison

I've basically turned into Liza Minnelli: I'm dancing in tights and sequins, begging you to love me.

Compromise, communicate, and never go to bed angry - the three pieces of advice gifted and regifted to all newlyweds.

It had gotten to the point where it seemed like nothing matters, because I'm not a real person and neither is anyone else.

Everyone has a moment where life goes off the rails.

They say you can litter-box train them, but they lie.

Probably drove in from Mission Hills, feeling magnanimous about setting foot north of the river.

It was a constant problem: too much control or no control at all.

He was born to be lonely, that's what he knew for certain.

I just think some women aren't made to be mothers. And some women aren't made to be daughters.

People do what they're supposed to do and then wait for you to pile on the appreciation - they're

I was not raised by big-dreamer parents who pictured their child as a future president. I was raised by pragmatic parents who pictured their child as a future office worker of some sort, making a living of some sort.

On the pavement near my car are the smashed skeletons of two baby birds, their flattened beaks and wings making them look reptilian. They've been there for a year. I can't resist looking at them each time I get in my car. We need a good flood, wash them away.

That's how screwed up you are, I thought. Your idea of adulthood still comes from picturebooks.

And she'd feel sorry for the kids, but not in a way that made her want to help, just in a way that made her not want to look at them anymore.

Ah, well, being conflicted means you can live a shallow life without copping to be a shallow person.

Everywhere felt like a jail now- doors opening and closing, and me never feeling safe.

Inside joke is like a symbol of friendship without having to do the work required of an actual friendship. So

We're on your side, but we need the truth. The only thing that makes you look bad is you holding out on us.

You stopped loving me. We're a sick, fucking toxic Möbius strip, Amy. We weren't ourselves when we fell in love, and when we became ourselves - surprise! - we were poison. We complete each other in the nastiest, ugliest possible way. You don't even really love me, Amy. You don't even like me. Divorce me. Divorce me, and let's try to be happy.

Yet most of the time that I'm awake, I want to cut. Not small words either. Equivocate. Inarticulate. Duplicitous. At my hospital back in Illinois they would not approve of this craving.

My mother would not be distracted from her grief. To this day it remains a hobby.

I hope you're feeling better about yourself too, Camille. That's an important thing, liking oneself. A good attitude infects just as easily as a bad one." "Enjoy the horses." "I always do.

Worries were almost physical beings, leechy creatures with latchhooks for fingers, meant to be vanquished immediately.

One snowy April night, I felt so lonely. I was drinking warm amaretto with Bleecker and reading, lying on the floor as the snow came down, listening to old scratchy albums, like Nick and I used to

That is the correct grammar, you know: her husband and me.

I'm here, I said, and it felt shockingly comforting, those words. When I'm panicked, I say them aloud to myself. I'm here. I don't usually feel that I am. I feel like a warm gust of wind could exhale my way and I'd be disappeared forever, not even a sliver of fingernail left behind. On some days, I find this thought calming; on others it chills me.

[She was] sitting across from us, her legs pressed together to one side, like a slash mark. Pretty/professional.

He was one of those guys who'd pronounce I'm a hugger as he came at you, neglecting to ask if the feeling was mutual.

I'm a huge fan of ghost stories, that sort of slow build, the suspense and the questioning about whether you're imagining something or if it's real.

I feel like Amy wanted people to believe she really was perfect. And as we got to be friends, I got to know her. And she wasn't perfect. You know? She was brilliant and charming and all that, but she was also controlling and OCD and a drama queen and a bit of a liar. Which was fine by me. It just wasn't fine by her. She got rid of me because I knew she wasn't perfect.

That easy, huh?" "You just have to decide to do it and then do it," she said. "Discipline. Follow through. Like anything.

It's an insane, insane crime, a lot of it isn't going to make sense. That's why people are so obsessed with these murders. If they made any sense, they wouldn't really be mysteries, right?

I know it's a guy who will talk to me, he wears his cockiness like an ironic T-shirt, but it fits him better. He is the kind of guy who carries himself like he gets laid a lot, a guy who likes women, a guy who would actually fuck me properly. I would like to be fucked properly! My dating life seems to rotate around three types of me: preppy Ivy Leaguers who believe they're characters in a Fitzgerald novel; slick Wall Streeters with money signs in their yes, their ears, their mouths; and sensitive smart-boys who are so self-aware that everything feels like a joke.

Millions of dollars later, and neither of them were happy. Money is wasted on the rich.

I'm a self-didact. (Not a dirty word, look it up.) I read constantly. I think. But I lack formal education. So I'm left with the feeling that I'm smarter than everyone around me but that if I ever got around really smart people - people who went to universities and drank wine and spoke Latin - that they'd be bored as hell by me.

I was a callow boy, and then a man, good and bad. Now at last I'm the hero. I am the one to root for in the never-ending war story of our marriage.

It was one of those moments where you saved me, you made me laugh at just the right time.

Just ... No, Amy. Not right now. I can't take one more bit of stress. I can't handle one more thing to worry about. I am cracking under the pressure. I will snap. For once I know he's telling the truth.

I like the discipline of writing a script. You can't go into the character's head - you have to find these creative ways to help externalize what they're thinking.

I don't know that we are actually human at this point, those of us who are like most of us, who grew up with TV and movies and now the Internet. If we are betrayed, we know the words to say; when a loved one dies, we know the words to say. If we want to play the stud or the smart-ass or the fool, we know the words to say. We are all working from the same dog-eared script. It

But she did invite me to her house, and women like that don't invite over women like me unless they want something.

He is learning to love me unconditionally, under all my conditions. I think we are finally on our way to happiness. I have finally figured it out.

The Dunne kids don't perform hugs well.

Three minutes, so I turned on the radio and of course it was a Tom Petty song - is there ever a time you turn on the radio and don't hear a Tom Petty song? -

No parents should see their child die, that such an event is like nature spun backward.

Amy's story could have gone a million other ways, but she met me, and bad things happened.

Nothing to it but to do it, nothing to it but to do it.

The world will always need a drink

My mother said she was the most popular girl in school, and I believed it. Jackie said she was the meanest, and I believed that, too.

Our kind of love can go into remission, but it's always waiting to return. Like the world sweetest cancer.

I think it's fair to say I am a writer. I'm using this journal to get better: to hone my skills, to collect details and observations. To show don't tell and all that other writerly crap.

At some point, Len was going to make a real pass at her, forcing her to make a real decision, and the game was so pathetic it made her want to weep. The hunter and the hunted, but it was like a bad nature show: He was a three-legged, runt coyote and she was a tired, limping bunny. It was not magnificent.

Kissi frowned ar him, then looked at me for explanation. I widened my eyes, grimaced: the look women give each other when they're embarrassed of the men they're with.

I was a man of jagged risings

I need to be ambushed, caught unawares, like some sort of feral love-jackal. I'm too self-conscious otherwise.

I spoke in a soft, soothing voice, a voice wearing a cardigan.

Being conflicted means you can live a shallow life without copping to being a shallow person.

on the way to the beauty parlor.

The casino seemed like a good idea at first - right off the highway, filled with drunks and elderly, neither of whom are known for eyesight. But I am feeling crowded and fidgety, aware of the cameras in every corner, the doors that could snap shut.

brain was sticky, phrases and snatches of songs were always wedging themselves in there. Annihilation. He saw flashes of Norse barbarians swinging axes. He wondered for a second, only a second, if he'd been reincarnated, and this was some leftover memory, flittering down like ash. Then he picked up his bike and banished the idea. He wasn't ten.

I'm a true-crime addict. It's not something I'm particularly proud of, but I can't stop.

My story for the day was a limp sort of evil.

I still believed he'd love me again somehow, love me that intense, thick way he did, the way that made everything good.