Quotes from Gillian Flynn

Wear this, don't wear that. Do this chore now and do this chore when you get a chance and by that I mean now. And definitely, definitely give up the things you love fro me, so I will have proof that you love me best. It's the female pissing contest -- as we swan around our book clubs and our cocktail hours, there are few things women love more than being able to detail the sacrifices our men make for us. A call-and-response, the response being: Ohh, that's so sweet.

Sometimes I think illness sits inside every woman, waiting for the right moment to bloom.

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

I'm not someone who can be depended one five days a week. Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday? I don't even get out of bed five days in a row-I often don't remember to eat five days in a row. Reporting to a workplace, where I should need to stay for eight hours-eight big hours outside my home- was unfeasible.

And sometimes drunk women aren't raped; they just make stupid choices--and to say we deserve special treatment when we're drunk because we're women, to say we need to be looked after , I find offensive.

He has that look, like I am being unreasonable, like he is so sure I am being unreasonable that I wonder if I am.

Soul mates. They really call themselves that, which makes sense, because I guess they are ... They have no harsh edges with each other, no spiny conflicts, they ride though life like conjoined jellyfish - expanding and contracting instinctively, filling each other's spaces liquidly. Making it look easy.

Empathetic silence is one of the most underused weapons in the world.

I'm in a foreign land, trying to explain myself, trying to make myself known. 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?

Sometimes I feel like Nick has decided on a version of me that doesn't exist.

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

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?

Do you ever feel like bad things are going to happen, and you can't stop them? You can't do anything, you just have to wait?

I've suffered betrayal with all five senses. For over a year.

It was silly but incredibly sweet, these people spending so much energy trying to figure me out. The answer: I don't like cherries.

Republicans go to Sam's Club, Democrats go to Costco.

I'd developed an inability to demonstrate much negative emotion at all. It was another thing that made me seem like a dick - my stomach could be all oiled eels, and you would get nothing from my face and less from my words. It was a constant problem: too much control or no control at all.

I'm tired of dying.

It sounded artificial, like a beauty pageant contestant pledging world peace. I did feel sad, but articulating it seemed cheap to me.

Everyone has their own version of a memory

Whenever I see news stories about children who were killed by their parents, I think: But how could it be? They cared enough to give this kid a name, they had a moment—at least one moment—when they sifted through all the possibilities and picked one specific name for their child, decided what they would call their baby. How could you kill something you cared enough to name?

I was never really on my side in any argument. I liked the Old Testament spitefulness of the phrase got what she deserved. Sometimes women do.

If she's sad or upset or angry, she needs to be alone-she fears a man dismissing her womanly tears.

When a child knows that young that her mother doesn't care for her, bad things happen.