01UndatedThe one plentiful herds of magazine writers would continue to be culled - by the Internet, by the recession, by the American public, who would rather watch TV or play video games or electronically inform friends that, like, 'rain sucks!' But there's no app for a bourbon buzz on a warm day in a cool, dark bar. The world will always want a drink.Gillian Flynn / quote ↗
04UndatedAnd I think, "I'm so fucking lonely". I go home and cry for a while. I am almost 32. That's not old especially in New York. But the fact is it has been years since I even liked someone. So how likely is it I'll meet someone I love enough to marry? I'm tired of not knowing who I'll be with, or if I'll be with anyone.Gillian Flynn / quote ↗
05UndatedThere will be days you wish you’d never done it. And thosewill be the good times, when it’s only days of regret and notmonths.Gillian Flynn / quote ↗
06UndatedSo are there any asshole guys here I can start dating?' she says. 'That's, like, my pattern.Gillian Flynn / quote ↗
07UndatedThe man cocked his gun and Patty had time for one last thought: I wish, I wish, I wish I could take this back.Gillian Flynn / quote ↗
08UndatedMy parents have always worried that I’d take Amy too personally — they always tell not to read too much into her, And yet I can’t fail to notice that whenever I screw something up, Amy does it right: When I finally quit violin at age twelve, Amy was revealed as a prodigy in the next book. (“Sheesh, violin can be hard work, but handwork is the only way to get better!”) When I blew off the junior championship at age sixteen to do a beach weekend with friends, Amy recommitted to the game. (“Sheesh, I know it’s fun to spend time with friends, but I’d be letting myself and everyone else down if I didn’t show up for the tournament.”) This used to drive me mad, but after I wend off to Harvard (and Amy correct those my parents’ alma mater), I decided it was all too ridiculous to think about. That my parents, two child psychologists, chose this particular public form of passive-aggressiveness toward their child was not just fucked up but also stupid and weird and kind of hilarious.Gillian Flynn / quote ↗
09UndatedI regretted what a serious teenager I'd been: There were no posters of pop stars or favorite movies, no girlish collection of photos or corsages. Instead there were paintings of sailboats, proper pastel pastorals, a portrait of Eleanor Roosevelt. The latter was particularly strange, since I'd known little about Mrs. Roosevelt, except that she was good, which at the time I suppose was enough. Given my druthers now, I'd prefer a snapshot of Warren Harding's wife, "the Duchess," who recorded the smallest offenses in a little red notebook and avenged herself accordingly. Today I like my first ladies with a little bite.Gillian Flynn / quote ↗
10UndatedDon't fret, we'll sort this out: the true and the not true and the might as well be true.Gillian Flynn / quote ↗
11UndatedNatalie was buried in the family plot, next to a gravestone that already bore her parents' names. I know the wisdom, that no parents should see their child die, that such an event is like nature spun backward. But it's the only way to truly keep your child. Kid grow up, they forge more potent allegiances. They find a spouse or a lover. They will not be buried with you. The Keenes, however, will remain the purest form of family. Underground.Gillian Flynn / quote ↗
12UndatedI'm just tired of people judging me because I fit into a certain mold.Gillian Flynn / quote ↗
13UndatedThe secondhand experience is always better. The image is crisper, the view is keener, the camera angle and the soundtrack manipulate my emotions in a way reality can't anymore. I don't know that we are actually human at this point, those of us who grew up with TV and movies and now the internet. If we are betrayed, we know the words to say; when a loved one dies, we know the words to say. If we want to play the stud or the smart-ass or the fool, we know the words to say. We are all working from the same dog-eared scriptGillian Flynn / quote ↗
15UndatedIt had gotten to the point where it seemed like nothing matters, because I’m not a real person and neither is anyone else.Gillian Flynn / quote ↗
16UndatedI 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.Gillian Flynn / quote ↗
17UndatedThe Amy of today was abrasive enough to want to hurt, sometimes. I speak specifically of the Amy of today, who was only remotely like the woman I fell in love with. It had been an awful fairy-tale reverse transformation. Over just a few years, the old Amy, the girl of the big laugh and the east ways, literally shed herself, a pile of skin and soul on the floor, and out stepped this new, brittle, bitter Amy. My wife was no longer my wife but a razor-wire knot daring me to unloop her, and I was not up to the job with my thick, numb, nervous fingers. Country fingers. Flyover fingers untrained in the intricate, dangerous work of solving Amy. When I'd hold up the bloody stumps, she'd sigh and turn to her secret mental notebook on which she tallied all my deficiencies, forever noting disappointments, frailties, shortcomings. My old Amy, damn, she was fun. She was fun. She made me laugh. I'd forgotten that. And she laughed, From the bottom of her throat, from right behind that small finger-shaped hollow, which is the best place to laugh from. She released her grievances like handfuls of birdseed: They are there, and they are gone.Gillian Flynn / quote ↗
18UndatedI 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.Gillian Flynn / quote ↗
20UndatedBlame the economy, blame bad luck, blame my parents, blame your parents, blame the Internet, blame people who use the Internet.Gillian Flynn / quote ↗
22UndatedA theme that has always interested me is how women express anger, how women express violence. That is very much part of who women are, and it's so unaddressed. A vast amount of literature deals with cycles of violence about men, antiheroes. Women lack that vocabulary.Gillian Flynn / quote ↗
