Quotes from Gillian Flynn

Glum. It meant having the blues in a way that annoyed other people. Having the blues aggressively.

He pauses, and I know he is about to lie. The worst feeling: when you just have to wait and prepare yourself for the lie.

Something bad was about to happen. My wife was being clever again.

In truth, I wanted her to read my mind so I didn't have to stoop to the womanly art of articulation.

I've always believed clear-eyed sobriety was for the harder hearted.

How do you keep safe when your whole day is as wide and empty as the sky?

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

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.

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.

Sometimes I think I won't ever feel safe until I can count my last days on one hand. Three more days to get through until I don't have to worry about life anymore.

I don't have anything else to add. I just wanted to make sure I had the last word. I think I've earned that.

Sometimes if you let people do things to you, you're really doing it to them," Amma said, pulling another Blow Pop from her pocket. Cherry. "Know what I mean? If someone wants to do fucked-up things to you, and you let them, you're making them more fucked up. Then you have the control. As long as you don't go crazy.

I was the embodiment of every writer's worst fear: a cliché.

Ironic people always dissolve when confronted with earnestness, it's their kryptonite

I am not okay. I will be okay, but right now I am not okay. I want my husband to put his arms around me, to console me, to baby me a little bit. Just for a second.

Books may be temporary; dicks are forever.

Sleep is like a cat: It only comes to you if you ignore it. I drank more and continued my mantra. 'Stop thinking', swig, 'empty your head', swig, 'now, seriously empty your head'.

Give me a man with a little fight in him, a man who calls me on my bullshit. (But who also kind of likes my bullshit.) And yet: Don't land me in one of those relationships where we're always pecking at each other, disguising insults as jokes, rolling our eyes and playfully scrapping in front of our friends, hoping to lure them to our side of an argument they could not care less about.

I never knew I was capable of being ridiculous over a man. It's a relief.

You think you know the answer, you're going to find peace? Like knowing is somehow going to fix you? You think after what happened there's any peace for you, sweetheart? How about this. Instead of asking yourself what happened, just accept that it happened.

Americans like what is easy, and 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.

You don't ever want to be the wife who keeps her husband from playing poker - you don't ever want to be the shrew with the curlers and the rolling pin. So you swallow your disappointment and say okay.

Worries find you easily enough without inviting them.

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.