Quotes from Gillian Flynn

Cameras flashed. I turned away and saw spots. It was surreal. That's what people always say to describe moments that are merely unusual. I thought: You have no fucking idea what surreal is. My hangover was really warming up now, my left eye throbbing like a heart.

Everywhere I go is the river. I'm following it or it's following me.

Good catch, Tanner said. Next time do it before it comes out of your mouth.

January was the season for house robberies and violence. Christmas was over, and the new year just reminded you of how little your life had changed, and man, people got angry in January.

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

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

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.

The climax is when you are taught the lesson that Punch never learns, and you are caught and charged with murder.

Every morning she'd crick herself down onto the flimsy rug by her bed and pray, but it was actually a promise: Today I won't yell, I won't cry, I won't clench up into a ball like I am waiting for a blow to level me. I will enjoy today. She might make it to lunch before she went sour.

And I don't know, you're at that age, if a bunch of grownups are telling you something or encouraging you, it just … it started to feel real. That Ben had molested me, because otherwise, why were all these adults trying to get me to say he had? And my parents would be all stern: It's OK to tell the truth. It's OK to tell the truth. And so you told the lie that they thought was the truth.

If you were chopping up hookers or eating runaways, you'd try to look normal.

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

I thought being home might do you good, but Ã¢â'¬Â¦ I forget sometimes parents aren't always Ã¢â'¬Â¦ good for their kids.

They always call depression the blues, but I would have been happy to waken to a periwinkle outlook. Depression to me is urine yellow. Washed out, exhausted miles of weak piss.

When people ask me that question that everyone asks: What do you do? I'd say, I'm in customer service, which was true. To me, it's nice day's work when you make a lot of people smile. I know that sounds too earnest, but it's true. I mean, I would rather be a librarian, but I worry about the job security. Books may be temporary; dicks are forever.

Feeling sad means having too much time on your hands, usually.

No." I folded in on myself, ignoring my meal, projecting glumness. That was another of my mom's words: glum. It meant having the blues in a way that annoyed other people. Having the blues aggressively.

Those words had been the bane of my childhood, a constant reminder that nothing turned out right, not just for me but for anyone, and that's why someone had invented a saying like that. So we'd all know that we'd never have what we needed.

I rolled my eyes and set my head in my hands, as if it was too much for me, and it almost was.

I don't know anyone's name. If one of those women died, I couldn't even say, "Poor old Mrs. Zalinsky died." I'd have to say, "That mean old bitch across the street bit it.

You don't ever want to be the wife who keeps her husband from playing poker.

The quotes were good, if overpolished. I find this common, and in direct proportion to the amount of TV a subject watches. Not long ago, I interviewed a woman whose twenty-two-year-old daughter had just been murdered by her boyfriend, and she gave me a line straight from a legal drama I happened to catch the night before: I'd like to say that I pity him, but now I fear I'll never be able to pity again.

It's easy to like pregnant women-they're like ducklings or bunnies or dogs. Still, it baffles me that these self-righteous, self-enthralled waddlers get such special treatment. As if it's so hard to spread your legs and let a man ejaculate between them.

I woke up on my sister's couch with a raging hangover and an urge to kill my wife.