Quotes by Gillian Flynn

The man cocked his gun and Patty had time for one last thought: I wish, I wish, I wish I could take this back.

My 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.

I regretted what a serious teenager Id 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 Id known little about Mrs. Roosevelt, except that she was good, which at the time I suppose was enough. Given my druthers now, Id prefer a snapshot of Warren Hardings 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.

Dont fret, well sort this out: the true and the not true and the might as well be true.

Natalie 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 its 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.

Im just tired of people judging me because I fit into a certain mold.

The 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 cant anymore. I dont 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 script

Everyone who keeps a secret, itches to tell it.

It had gotten to the point where it seemed like nothing matters, because I’m not a real person and neither is anyone else.

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.

The 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 Id hold up the bloody stumps, shed 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. Id 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.

I know a little bit about trying to do the right thing and fucking up completely. I added.You talking about mom? Ben saidI 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.

Lately, Ive been leaning towards kindness.- Camille Preaker

Blame the economy, blame bad luck, blame my parents, blame your parents, blame the Internet, blame people who use the Internet.

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

A 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 its so unaddressed. A vast amount of literature deals with cycles of violence about men, antiheroes. Women lack that vocabulary.

“Id 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.”

“Just got to keep on keeping on.”

“I dont understand the point of being together if youre not the happiest.”

“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?”