Quotes from Gillian Flynn

A lot of people lacked that gift: knowing when to fuck off.

Sleep is like a cat: It only comes to you if you ignore it.

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.

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 was not a lovable child, and I'd grown into a deeply unlovable adult. Draw a picture of my soul, and it'd be a scribble with fangs.

I often don't say things out loud, even when I should. I contain and compartmentalize to a disturbing degree: In my belly-basement are hundreds of bottles of rage, despair, fear, but you'd never guess from looking at me.

My mother had always told her kids: 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.

It's humbling, to become the very thing you once mocked.

Sometimes I think illness sits inside every woman, waiting for the right moment to bloom. I have known so many sick women all my life. Women with chronic pain, with ever-gestating diseases. Women with conditions. Men, sure, they have bone snaps, they have backaches, they have a surgery or two, yank out a tonsil, insert a shiny plastic hip. Women get consumed.

A child weaned on poison considers harm a comfort.

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

I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ. Slit me at my belly and it might slide out, meaty and dark, drop on the floor so you could stomp on it.

I don't understand the point of being together if you're not the happiest.

She's easy to like. I've never understood why that's considered a compliment - that just anyone could like you.

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

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

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.)

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?

I waited patiently - years - for the pendulum to swing the other way, for men to start reading Jane Austen, learn how to knit, pretend to love cosmos, organize scrapbook parties, and make out with each other while we leer. And then we'd say, Yeah, he's a Cool Guy.

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.

My interest is in turning over a rock and seeing what's underneath. It's a personality trait more than anything; it's what made me want to become a crime reporter, even though I was not suited for it personality-wise.

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.)

What I read and what I go to the movies for is not to find a best friend, not to find inspirations, not necessarily for a hero's journey. It's to be involved with characters that are maybe incredibly different from me, that may be incredibly bad but that feel authentic.

There's a book by Anne Rivers Siddons called 'The House Next Door' that I just think is one of the all-time great haunted-house stories. I think that's one of the all-time greatest.