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

— Gillian Flynn

I feel like Amy wanted people to believe she really was perfect. And as we got to be friends, I got to know her. And she wasn't perfect. You know? She was brilliant and charming and all that, but she was also controlling and OCD and a drama queen and a bit of a liar. Which was fine by me. It just wasn't fine by her. She got rid of me because I knew she wasn't perfect.

— Gillian Flynn

If I say I don't want to read the book, I don't want to read the book.

— Gillian Flynn

I 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

I know, I know, I'm being a girl.

— Gillian Flynn

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.

— Gillian Flynn

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

— Gillian Flynn

In these shitty plastic days ...

— Gillian Flynn

I prepared to get out of bed, tossing the covers aside, the sheets dank-smelling, gray from my body. I wondered how long it had been since I'd changed them. And then I wondered how often you were supposed to change them. These were the kinds of things you didn't learn. I changed bedclothes after sex, now, finally, and that I only learned a few years ago from a movie on TV: Glenn Close, some thriller, and she'd just had sex and is changing the sheets and I can't remember the rest, because all I was thinking was: Oh, I guess people change sheets after they have sex. It made sense, but I'd never thought of it. I was raised feral, and I mostly stayed that way.

— Gillian Flynn

I 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