Quotes from Gillian Flynn

Money is wasted on the rich.

People are dumb. I'll never get over how dumb people are.

Nick Dunne took my pride and my dignity and my hope and my money. He took and took from me until I no longer existed. That's murder.

I've had the blues for twenty-four years.

The actual stuff my family owned, those boxes under my stairs, I can't quite bear to look at. I like other people's things better. They come with other people's history.

Do you understand this is serious? I understand you think it's serious.

How confusing to live in the shadow of a shadow.

He's calling you a Cool Girl to fool you! That's what men do: they try to make it sound like you are the cool girl so you will bow to their wishes. Like a car salesman saying, how much do you want to pay for this beauty? When you didn't agree to buy it yet.

It's good.' She chirps the last bit as if that were all to say about a book: It's good or it's bad. I liked it or I didn't. No discussions of the writing, the themes, the nuances, the structure. Just good or bad. Like a hot dog.

I always feel sad for the girl that I was, because it never occurred to me that my mother might comfort me. She has never told me she loved me, and I never assumed she did. She tended to me. She administrated me.

Marriage is compromise and hard work,and then more hard work and communication and compromise. And then work. Abandon all hope, ye who enter.

I felt hollowed out. My mom's death was not useful. I felt a shot of rage at her, and then imagined those last bloody moments in the house, when she realized it had gone wrong, when Debby lay dying, and it was all over, her unsterling life. My anger gave way to a strange tenderness, what a mother might feel for her child, and I thought, At least she tried. She tried, on that final day, as hard as anyone could have tried. And I would try to find peace in that.

She'll never really let me go. She likes the game too much. Then stop playing it.

Amy! My God! My God! My darling!' and buried my face in her neck, my arms wrapped tight around her, and let the cameras get their fifteen seconds, and I whispered deep inside her ear, 'You fucking bitch.

I lack formal education. So I'm left with the feeling that I'm smarter than everyone around me but that if I ever got around really smart people—people who went to universities and drank wine and spoke Latin—that they'd be bored as hell by me. It's a lonely way to go through life.

She blew more smoke toward me, a lazy game of cancer catch.

Amy's basically exploiting the sociopath's most reliable maxim. The bigger the lie, the more they believe it.

Hell, at this point, I can't imagine my story without Amy. She is my forever antagonist. We are one long frightening climax.

It's not easy, pairing yourself off with someone forever. It's an admirable thing, and I'm glad you're both doing it, but, boy-oh-girl-oh, there will be days you wish you'd never done it. And those will be the good times, when it's only days of regret and not months.

It was enough to be near her and hear her talk, it didn't always matter what she was saying. It should have, but it didn't.

She'd always been one of those girls who wanted what anyone else had, even if she didn't want it.

Committing to Nick, feeling safe with Nick, being happy with Nick, made me realize that there was a Real Amy in there, and she was so much better, more interesting and complicated and challenging, than Cool Amy. Nick wanted Cool Amy anyway. Can you imagine, finally showing your true self to your spouse, your soul mate, and having him not like you? So that's how the hating first began. I've thought about this a lot, and that's where it started, I think.

And if all of us are play-acting, there can be no such thing as a soul mate, because we don't have genuine souls.

I'm like that, nothing sticks.