Gillian Flynn Quotes

You'd literally lie, cheat, and steal -hell, kill- to convince people you are a good guy ~ Gillian Flynn

It's impossible to compete with the dead. I wished I could stop trying. ~ Gillian Flynn

I mean, if I were a guy, looking to pay a girl to wank
me off, I wouldn't walk in the room and say, "My God, I smell hints of fresh strudel and nutmeg…
quick, grab my dick! ~ Gillian Flynn

Sometimes I think I won't ever feel safe until I can count my last days on one hand. ~ Gillian Flynn

If you don't have money, gossip isn't bad leverage. Even inside one's own family. ~ Gillian Flynn

I worry I am coming perilously close to violating both of those promises. But still. It is our third wedding anniversary and I am alone in our apartment, my face all mask-tight from tears because, well, because: Just this afternoon, I get a voice mail from Nick, and I already know it's going to be bad, I know ~ Gillian Flynn

Sometimes the answer is at the bottom of a bottle, ~ Gillian Flynn

I'm so much happier now that I'm dead. Technically missing. Soon to be presumed dead. Gone. And my lazy lying shitting oblivious husband will go to prison for my murder. Nick Dunne took my pride and my dignity and my hope and my money. He took and took from me until I no longer existed. That's murder. Let the punishment fit the crime. ~ Gillian Flynn

Problems always start long before you really, really see them. ~ Gillian Flynn

Marrow-deep embarrassment, the kind that becomes part of your DNA, that changes you. ~ Gillian Flynn

But I know I'll never sleep again. I can't close my eyes when I'm next to her. It's like sleeping with a spider. ~ Gillian Flynn

Yes, I am finally a match for Amy. The other morning I woke up next to her, and I studied the back of her skull. I tried to read her thoughts. For once I didn't feel like I was staring into the sun. I'm rising to my wife's level of madness. Because I can feel her changing me again: 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's a story I can live with. Hell, at this point, I can't imagine my story without Amy. She is my forever antagonist.
We are one long frightening climax. ~ Gillian Flynn

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

She was clearly rich. Her handbag was too plain to be anything but incredibly expensive. ~ Gillian Flynn

Before Amy and I got serious, got engaged, got married, I would get glimpses of Go's thoughts in a sentence here or there. It's funny, I can't quite get a bead on her, like who she really is. And: You just seem kind of not yourself with her. And: There's a difference between really loving someone and loving the idea of her. And finally: The important thing is she makes you really happy. Back ~ Gillian Flynn

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

Nick grew up with a father who never ever apologized, so when Nick feels he has screwed up he goes on offense. ~ Gillian Flynn

To refuse has so many more consequences than submitting. ~ Gillian Flynn

Because you can't be as in love as we were and not have it invade your bone marrow. ~ Gillian Flynn

He turns around, and when he sees me standing there, he looks scared. That's something useful. Because I'm not going to let him go. He may think he was lying when he said all those nice things to lure me home. But I know different. I know Nick can't lie like that. I know that as he recited those words, he realized the truth. Ping! Because you can't be as in love as we were and not have it invade your bone marrow. Our kind of love can go into remission, but it's always waiting to return. Like the world's sweetest cancer...
"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 really love me, Amy. You don't even like me. Divorce me. Divorce me, and let's try to be happy.'
'I won't divorce you, Nick. I won't. And I swear to you, if you try to leave, I will devote my life to making your life as awful as I can. And you know I can make it awful. ~ Gillian Flynn

It was one of the few stories we told the same way. ~ Gillian Flynn

Diane didn't worry, that was for less hearty women. ~ Gillian Flynn

He never beat her, but his pure, inarticulate fury would fill the house for days, weeks, at a time, making the air humid, hard to breathe, my father stalking around with his lower jaw jutting out, giving him the look of a wounded, vengeful boxer, grinding his teeth so loud you could hear it across the room. ~ Gillian Flynn

Fuckyoufuckyoufuckyou, I chanted, ~ Gillian Flynn

We were the two unlikeliest people to charm information out of someone. Stunted human beings who got awkward every time we tried to express ourselves. ~ Gillian Flynn

It was about the worst outcome possible for my competitive wife: a town of contented also-rans. ~ Gillian Flynn

Diary Amy. She was meant to be likable. Meant for someone like you to like her. She's easy to like. I've never understood why that's considered a compliment - that just anyone could like you. No matter. ~ Gillian Flynn

Friends see most of each other's flaws. Spouses see every awful last bit. ~ Gillian Flynn

Because isn't that the point of every relationship: to be known by someone else, to be understood? He gets me. She gets me. Isn't that the simple magic phrase? ~ Gillian Flynn

I felt something loosen in me, that shouldn't have loosened. A stitch come undone. ~ Gillian Flynn

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? - so ~ Gillian Flynn

We were born in the '70s, back when twins were rare, a bit magical: cousins of the unicorn, siblings of the elves. ~ Gillian Flynn

I changed my name for that piece of shit. Historical records have been altered - Amy Elliott to Amy Dunne - like it's nothing. No, he does not get to win. ~ Gillian Flynn

People love talking, and I have never been a huge talker. I carry on an inner monologue, but the words often don't reach my lips. ~ Gillian Flynn

I think if you had a dick, all sorts of bad things would happen. ~ Gillian Flynn

Andie was a physical girl, and that's not code for 'It's all about the sex'. She was a hugger, a toucher, she was prone to running her fingers through my hair or down my back in a friendly scratch. She got reassurance and comfort from touching. And yes, fine, she also liked sex. ~ Gillian Flynn

Lately, I've been leaning towards kindness.

- Camille Preaker ~ Gillian Flynn

You do realize, that if you actually dated her, saw her on a regular basis, lived with her, that she would find some fault with you, right? That she would find some things about you that drove her crazy. That she'd make demands of you that you wouldn't like. That she'd get angry at you? ~ Gillian Flynn

He could cheat on me and he would never tell me, and he would think less and less of me for not figuring it out. He would see me across the breakfast table, innocently slurping cereal, and know that I am a fool, and how can anyone respect a fool? ~ Gillian Flynn

I have a face you want to punch: ~ Gillian Flynn

I feel like I need to give people a note with the book that says, 'I'm OK, no worries!' ~ Gillian Flynn

I've had the blues for twenty-four years. ~ Gillian Flynn

She is an incredibly intelligent idiot ~ Gillian Flynn

I was not that man: I didn't hate and fear all women. I was a one-woman misogynist. If I despised only Amy, focused all my fury and rage and venom on the one woman who deserved it, that didn't make me my father. That made me sane. ~ Gillian Flynn

I was already tired of talking, and I'd said very little. ~ Gillian Flynn

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

about Jim Jeffreys was that he must be Christian, churchy - he had the patience and optimism of someone who thought Jesus was ~ Gillian Flynn

But I wasn't a well-read bookworm; I was just a dumb whore in the right library. ~ Gillian Flynn

I am a cutter, you see. Also a snipper, a slicer, a carver, a jabber. I am a very special case. I have a purpose. My skin, you see, screams. It's covered with words - cook, cupcake, kitty, curls - as if a knife-wielding first-grader learned to write on my flesh. I sometimes, but only sometimes, laugh. Getting out of the bath and seeing, out of the corner of my eye, down the side of a leg: babydoll. Pull on a sweater and, in a flash of my wrist: harmful. Why these words? Thousands of hours of therapy have yielded a few ideas from the good doctors. They are often feminine, in a Dick and Jane, pink vs. puppy dog tails sort of way. Or they're flat-out negative. Number of synonyms for anxious carved in my skin: eleven. The one thing I know for sure is that at the time, it was crucial to see these letters on me, and not just see them, but feel them. Burning on my left hip: petticoat.

And near it, my first word, slashed on an anxious summer day at age thirteen: wicked. I woke up that morning, hot and bored, worried about the hours ahead. How do you keep safe when your whole day is as wide and empty as the sky? Anything could happen. I remember feeling that word, heavy and slightly sticky across my pubic bone. My mother's steak knife. Cutting like a child along red imaginary lines. Cleaning myself. Digging in deeper. Cleaning myself. Pouring bleach over the knife and sneaking through the kitchen to return it. Wicked. Relief. The rest of the day, I spent ministering to my ~ Gillian Flynn

Vickery, a slim fellow in his early fifties, had already sweated through his uniform. His shirt clung to his chest, and his pants puckered out in back where an ass should have been. ~ Gillian Flynn

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. ~ Gillian Flynn

The Days were a clan that mighta lived long
But Ben Day's head got screwed on wrong
That boy craved dark Satan's power
So he killed his family in one nasty hour
Little Michelle he strangled in the night
Then chopped up Debby: a bloody sight
Mother Patty he saved for last
Blew off her head with a shotgun blast
Baby Libby somehow survived
But to live through that ain't much a life
- SCHOOLYARD RHYME, CIRCA 1985 ~ Gillian Flynn

But I do like a certain standard of living - I think it's fair to say the garbage shouldn't literally overflow, and the plates shouldn't sit in the sink for a week with smears of bean burrito dried on them. That's just being a good grown-up roommate. And Nick's not doing anything anymore, so I have to nag, and it pisses me off: ~ Gillian Flynn

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. ~ Gillian Flynn

There are a million talented writers who are unpublished only because they stop writing when it gets hard. ~ Gillian Flynn

It's a very female thing, isn't it, to take one boys' night and snowball it into a marital infidelity that will destroy our marriage? ~ Gillian Flynn

She had what the Victorians would call a finely shaped head. You could imagine the skull quite easily.
I'd know her head anywhere.
And what's inside it. I think of that, too: her mind. Her brain, all those coils, and her thoughts shuttling through those coils like fast, frantic centipedes. Like a child, I picture opening her skull, unspooling her brain and sifting through it, trying to catch and pin down her thoughts. What are you thinking, Amy? ~ Gillian Flynn

It was my fifth lie to the police. I was just starting. ~ Gillian Flynn

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

Women get consumed. Not surprising, considering the sheer amount of traffic a woman's body experiences. Tampons and speculums. Cocks, fingers, vibrators and more, between the legs, from behind, in the mouth. ~ Gillian Flynn

Sometimes it is all too loud. T ~ Gillian Flynn

You always take the extra step that others don't, that's who you are. ~ Gillian Flynn

I feel myself trying to be charming, and then I realize I'm obviously trying to be charming, and then I try to be even more charming to make up for the fake charm, and then I've basically turned into Liza Minnelli: I'm dancing in tights and sequins, begging you to love me. There's a bowler and jazz hands and lots of teeth. ~ Gillian Flynn

The Day women were the definition of mob mentality. And here they were on a farm with plenty of pitchforks. ~ Gillian Flynn

I am overachieving at aimlessness, I am a type-A, alpha-girl lollygagger, the leader of a gang of heartbroken kids, running wild across this lonely strip of amusements, each of us smarting from the betrayals of a loved one. ~ Gillian Flynn

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

He stands in the street with his arms out to me and a huge grin on his face-Baby! - and I run and I jump up into his arms he presses a stubbly cheek against mine. ~ Gillian Flynn

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

A ghost has that freedom. ~ Gillian Flynn

You know how people sometimes say they have to hurt because if they don't, they're so numb they won't feel anything? ~ Gillian Flynn

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. ~ Gillian Flynn

... it's a nice day's work when you make a lot of people smile. ~ Gillian Flynn

I assumed everything bad in the world could happen, because everything bad in the world already did happen. ~ Gillian Flynn

There's something disturbing about recalling a warm memory and feeling utterly cold. ~ Gillian Flynn

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. ~ Gillian Flynn

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. ~ Gillian Flynn

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. ~ Gillian Flynn

See, Curry, Detective Willis felt I was holding back some information and so he sulked off, like all men do when they don't get their way with women they've fooled around with. ~ Gillian Flynn

Weird that a house so new could feel haunted, and not in the romantic Victorian-novel way, just really gruesomely, shittily ruined. ~ Gillian Flynn

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

before it ever opened. It was ~ Gillian Flynn

I know a little bit about trying to do the right thing and fucking up completely." I added.
"You talking about mom?" Ben said
"I was talking about me."
"You could have been talking about all of us.
Ben pressed his hand against the glass and my brother and I matched palms. ~ Gillian Flynn

I was pretending, the way I often did, pretending to have a personality. I can't help it, it's what I've always done: The way some women change fashion regularly, I change personalities. What persona feels good, what's coveted, what's au courant? I think most people do this, they just don't admit it, or else they settle on one persona because they are too lazy or stupid to pull a switch. ~ Gillian Flynn

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

He never had the talent, just the hard wish. ~ Gillian Flynn

I've always been partial to the image of liquor as lubrication, a layer of protection from all the sharp thoughts in your head. ~ Gillian Flynn

Mama Mo does not insist. She simply makes things a reality by assuming they are such: ~ Gillian Flynn

I was a man of jagged risings ~ Gillian Flynn

This is the hardest part: waiting for stupid people to figure things out. ~ Gillian Flynn

Marriage is compromise and hard work,and then more hard work and communication and compromise. And then work. Abandon all hope, ye who enter. ~ Gillian Flynn

Who would I be without Amy to react to? Because she was right: As a man, I had been my most impressive when I loved her -- and I was my next best self when I hated her. ~ Gillian Flynn

Well, a little girl is more likely to trust a person who reminds her of her momma, right? Depends on what her momma's like, I thought. ~ Gillian Flynn

It requires discipline, to drown oneself, but I have discipline in spades. My body may never be discovered, or it may resurface weeks, months, later
eroded to the point that my death can't be time-stamped
and I will provide a last bit of evidence to make sure Nick is marched to the padded cross, the prison table where he'll be pumped with poison and die. ~ Gillian Flynn

Because everyone loves the Dead Girl. ~ Gillian Flynn

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

I had to know I could love a person unconditionally, that I could make a little creature feel constantly welcome and wanted no matter what. That I could be a different kind of father than my dad was. ~ Gillian Flynn

To show don't tell and all that other writery crap. (Adopted-orphan smile, I mean, that's not bad, come on.) ~ Gillian Flynn

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

Instead, she'd let it get even more overgrown and cobwebbed. We'd always joked that it would be a good place to bury a body. It couldn't be. ~ Gillian Flynn

Ska," I said, swerving toward delirious laughter. "Great. ~ Gillian Flynn