The Complete Gillian Flynn Quotes

“being an only child—you grow up knowing you aren’t allowed to disappoint, you’re not even allowed to die. There isn’t a replacement toddling around; you’re it. It makes you desperate to be flawless, and it also makes you drunk with the power. In such ways are despots made.”
― Gillian Flynn, The Complete Gillian Flynn: Gone Girl, Dark Places, Sharp Objects

“People love talking, and I have never been a huge talker. I carry on an inner monologue, but the words often don’t reach my lips. She looks nice today, I’d think, but somehow it wouldn’t occur to me to say it out loud.”
― Gillian Flynn, The Complete Gillian Flynn: Gone Girl, Dark Places, Sharp Objects

“Shotgun blasts in a small hallway. The panicked, jaybird cries of my mother, still trying to save her kids with half her head gone.”
― Gillian Flynn, The Complete Gillian Flynn: Gone Girl, Dark Places, Sharp Objects

“The face you give the world tells the world how to treat you,”
― Gillian Flynn, The Complete Gillian Flynn: Gone Girl, Dark Places, Sharp Objects

“That was another of my mom’s words: glum. It meant having the blues in a way that annoyed other people. Having the blues aggressively.”
― Gillian Flynn, The Complete Gillian Flynn: Gone Girl, Dark Places, Sharp Objects

“Don’t screw up, you are Amazing Amy. Our only one. There is an unfair responsibility that comes with being an only child—you grow up knowing you aren’t allowed to disappoint, you’re not even allowed to die. There isn’t a replacement toddling around; you’re it. It makes you desperate to be flawless, and it also makes you drunk with the power. In such ways are despots made.”
― Gillian Flynn, The Complete Gillian Flynn: Gone Girl, Dark Places, Sharp Objects

“Whenever I hear that phrase,”
― Gillian Flynn, The Gillian Flynn Collection: Sharp Objects, Dark Places, Gone Girl

“IT WAS MISERABLE, wet-bone March and I was lying in bed thinking about killing myself, a hobby of mine.”
― Gillian Flynn, The Gillian Flynn Collection: Sharp Objects, Dark Places, Gone Girl

“The Days were a clan that mighta lived long But Ben Day’s head got screwed on wrong That boy craved dark Satan’s power So he killed his family in one nasty hour Little Michelle he strangled in the night Then chopped up Debby: a bloody sight Mother Patty he saved for last Blew off her head with a shotgun blast Baby Libby somehow survived But to live through that ain’t much a life —SCHOOLYARD RHYME, CIRCA 1985”
― Gillian Flynn, The Complete Gillian Flynn: Gone Girl, Dark Places, Sharp Objects

“I know women whose entire personas are woven from a benign mediocrity. Their lives are a list of shortcomings: the unappreciative boyfriend, the extra ten pounds, the dismissive boss, the conniving sister, the straying husband.”
― Gillian Flynn, The Complete Gillian Flynn: Gone Girl, Dark Places, Sharp Objects

“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. 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. 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 would have done anything to feel real again.”
― Gillian Flynn, The Complete Gillian Flynn: Gone Girl, Dark Places, Sharp Objects