Gillian Flynn

“I remember always being baffled by other children. I would be at a birthday party and watch the other kids giggling and making faces, and I would try to do that, too, but I wouldn't understand why. I would site there with the tight elastic thread of the birthday hat parting the pudge of my underchin, with the grainy frosting of the cake bluing my teeth, and I would try to figure out why it was fun.”

“I should just listen to my gut and then do the opposite.”

“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.”

“Tiene algo de perturbador, evocar un recuerdo cálido y que te deje completamente frío.”

“Camille?" Her voice quiet and girlish and unsure. "You know how people sometimes say they have to hurt because if they don't, they're so numb they won't feel anything?""Mmm.""What if it's the opposite?" Amma whispered. "What if you hurt because it feels so good? Like you have a tingling, like someone left a switch on in your body. And nothing can turn that switch off except hurting? What does that mean?"I pretended to be asleep. I pretended not to feel her fingers tracing vanish over and over on the back of my neck.”

“To refuse has so many more consequences than submitting.”

“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.”

“You're sexist. I'm so sick of liberal lefty men practicing sexual discrimination under the guise of protecting women against sexual discrimination.”

“He pauses, and I know he is about to lie. The worst feeling: when you just have to wait and prepare yourself for the lie.”

“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.”

“It doesn't matter, because I have found my match. It's Nick, laid-back and calm, smart and fun and uncomplicated. Untortured, happy. Nice. Big penis.”

“I could see the cat was definitely on the steps. Still on the steps, 20 minutes after Carl's call. This was strange; Amy loved the cat. The cat was declawed, the cat was never let outside, never ever, because the cat ... was sweet, but extremely stupid. ... Amy knew she'd never see the cat again if he ever got out. The cat would waddle straight into the Mississippi River, "deedlie-dum," and float all the way to the Gulf of Mexico into the maw of a hungry bull shark. But it turned out, the cat wasn't even smart enough to get past the steps.”

“New York was packed with writers, real writers, because there were magazines, real magazines, loads of them. This was back when the Internet was still some exotic pet kept in the corner of the publishing world--throw some kibble at it, watch it dance on its little leash, oh quite cute, it definitely won't kill us in the night.”

“I didn't think past the first step of anything, that was the key. I drank a Coke and didn't worry about how to recycle the can or about the acid puddling in my belly, acid so powerful it could strip clean a penny. We went to a dumb movie and I didn't worry about the offensive sexism or the lack of minorities in meaningful roles. I didn't even worry about anything that came next. Nothing had consequence, I was living in the moment, and I could feel myself getting shallower and dumber. But also happy.”

“Should I remove my soul before I come inside?”

“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.”

“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.”

“Ninety degrees but the heat made me feel safe, like walking under water.”

“It's easy to like pregnant women-they're like ducklings or bunnies or dogs. Still, it baffles me that these self-righteous, self-enthralled waddlers get such special treatment. As if it's so hard to spread your legs and let a man ejaculate between them.”

“Most beautiful, good things were done by women people scorn.”

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

“I have a meanness inside of me, real as an organ.”

“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 am not okay. I will be okay, but right now I am not okay. I want my husband to put his arms around me, to console me, to baby me a little bit. Just for a second.”

“But I know I'll never sleep again. I can't close my eyes when I'm next to her. It's like sleeping with a spider.”

“It was surprising that you could spend hours in the middle of the night pretending things were okay, and know in thirty seconds of daylight that simply wasn't so”

“Glum. It meant having the blues in a way that annoyed other people. Having the blues aggressively.”

“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?”

“The worst feeling: when you just have to wait and prepare yourself for the lie.”

“There's a difference between really loving someone and loving the idea of her.”

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

“In truth, I wanted her to read my mind so I didn't have to stoop to the womanly art of articulation.”

“It’s humbling, to become the very thing you once mocked.”

“I got it, Go said. Go home, fuck her brains out, then smack her with your penis and scream, There's some wood for you bitch!”

“She had what the Victorians would call a finely shaped head. You could imagine the skull quite easily. I'd know her head anywhere.And what's inside it. I think of that, too: her mind. Her brain, all those coils, and her thoughts shuttling through those coils like fast, frantic centipedes. Like a child, I picture opening her skull, unspooling her brain and sifting through it, trying to catch and pin down her thoughts. What are you thinking, Amy?”

“Bang bang bang. I understand now why so many horror movies use that device-the mysterious knock on the door-because it has the weight of a nightmare. You don't know what's out there, yet you know you'll open it. You'll think what I think: No one bad ever knocks.”

“I still believed he'd love me again somehow, love me that intense, thick way he did, the way that made everything good.”

“That night at the Brooklyn party, I was playing the girl who was in style, the girl a man like Nick wants: the Cool Girl. Men always say that as the defining compliment, don't they? She's a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she's hosting the world's biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot.”

“I don't know that we are actually human at this point, those of us who are like most of us, who grew up with 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. It's a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless Automat of characters.”

“Ironic people always dissolve when confronted with earnestness, it's their kryptonite”

“Imagine the jacket copr: People behaved mostly well and then they died.”

“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?”

“I can't recall a single amazing thing I have seen first hand that I didn't immediately reference to amp is of a TV show. You know the awful singsong the blasé: Seeeen it. I've literally seen it all, and the worst thing, the thing that makes me want to blow my brains out, is: The secondhand experience is always better. The image is crisper, the view is keener, the camera angle and 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 are like most 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.”

“I don't have anything else to add. I just wanted to make sure I had the last word. I think I've earned that.”

“It's so strange to think: A year ago today, I was undoing my husband. Now I am almost done reassembling him.”

“Unconditional love is an undisciplined love and, as we all have seen, undisciplined love is disastrous.”

“We had spent years battling for control of our marriage, of our love story, our life story. I had been thoroughly, finally outplayed. I created a manuscript, and she created a life.”

“He was one of those guys who'd pronounce I'm a hugger as he came at you, neglecting to ask if the feeling was mutual.”

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