Quotes from Gillian Flynn

I started on the opening page of my own book. 'I am a cheating, weak-spined, women-fearing coward, and i am the hero of your story. Because the woman I cheated on - my wife, Amy Elliott Dunne - is a sociopath and a murderer.' Yes. I'd read that.

He's as smooth and shallow as glass.

The face you give the world tells the world how to treat you

Only Tanner Bolt could get away with making me, a client, fly to him, then tell me what kind of dance I'd need to do in order to give him my money.

smart-boys fuck like they're composing a piece of math rock: This hand strums around here, and then this finger offers a nice bass rhythm.…

People do what they're supposed to do and then wait for you to pile on the appreciation—they're like frozen-yogurt employees who put out cups for tips.

For so many years, my husband has lauded the emotional solidity of midwesterners: stoic, humble, without affectation! But these aren't the kinds of people who provide good memoir material. Imagine the jacket copy: People behaved mostly well and then they died.

Against the far wall was a wire cage holding a pack of unblinking bunnies. World's dumbest pet, I thought. Who would want an animal that sat, quivered, and shat everywhere? They say you can litter-box train them, but they lie.

Sometimes he felt like he'd been gone his whole life—in exile, away from the place he was supposed to be, and that, soldier-like, he was pining to be returned. Homesick for a place he'd never been.

It is always consoling to think of suicide; it's what gets one through many a bad night.

Sometimes when you let people do things to you, you're really doing it to them.

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.

Patty knew that feeling, a dream hangover, like when she jumped up from a panicky sleep at 2 in the morning and tried to talk herself into thinking the farm was OK, that this year would pick up, and then felt all the sicker when she woke up to the alarm a few hours later, guilty and duped. It was suprising that you could spend hours in the middle of the night pretending things were OK, and know in thirty seconds of daylight that that simply wasn't so.' -Dark Places

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

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. Marybeth

Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don't mind, I'm the Cool Girl.

If I had a dick, I would fuck this peanut butter

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.

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

He refills my drink without me having to ask, somehow ferreting out one last cup of the good stuff. He has claimed me, placed a flag in me: I was here first, she's mine, mine. It feels nice, after my recent series of nervous, respectful post-feminist men, to be a territory.

Sometimes guys, they make things hard for us just because they can.

I remember always being baffled by other children. I would be at a birthday party and watch the other kids giggling and making faces, and I would try to do that too, but I wouldn't understand why. I would sit there with the tight elastic thread of the birthday hat parting the pudge of my underchin, with the grainy frosting of the cake bluing my teeth, and I would try to figure out why it was fun. With Nick, I understood finally. Because he was so much fun. It was like dating a sea otter.

What kind of woman gets slaughtered by her own son?

If you're about to do something, and you want to know if it's a bad idea, imagine seeing it printed in the paper for all the world to see.