Top 350 Gillian Flynn Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “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.”

— Gillian Flynn

152. “Never leave a message for someone you really want to reach. No, you keep phoning and phoning until someone picks up – out of anger or curiosity or fear – and then you blurt out whatever words will keep them on the line. I.”

— Gillian Flynn

153. “Thank you, Gillian Flynn, for quoting The Sure Thing- “Nick’s the kind of guy you can drink a beer with, the kind of guy who doesn’t mind if you puke in his car. Nick!”

— Gillian Flynn

154. “I’ve always been partial to the image of liquor as lubrication, a layer of protection from all the sharp thoughts in your head.”

— Gillian Flynn

155. “There might be a space too, for this. The feel of killing, there might be an empty spot just waiting to be filled.”

— Gillian Flynn

156. “No parents should see their child die, that such an event is like nature spun backward.”

— Gillian Flynn

157. “How confusing to live in the shadow of a shadow.”

— Gillian Flynn

158. “Everyone has a moment when life goes off the rails.”

— Gillian Flynn

159. “I’m all for whatever transitions the book properly to a movie.”

— Gillian Flynn

160. “Looking at my smarmy grin, my hooded eyes, I thought, I would hate this guy.”

— Gillian Flynn

161. “Paper is first year,′ I said. At the end of Year One’s unexpectedly wrenching treasure hunt, Amy presented me with a set of posh stationery, my initials embossed at the top, the paper so creamy I expected my fingers to come away moist. In return, I’d presented my wife with a bright red dime-store paper kite, picturing the park, picnics, warm summer gusts. Neither of us liked our presents; we’s each have preferred the other’s. It was a reverse O. Henry.”

— Gillian Flynn

162. “Our kind of love can go into remission, but it’s always waiting to return. Like the world sweetest cancer.”

— Gillian Flynn

163. “Feeling sad means having too much time on your hands, usually. Really. I’m not a licensed therapist but usually it means too much time.”

— Gillian Flynn

164. “Libby was a Christmas baby, which meant she never got the right amount of presents. Patty would hold one extra gift aside – and Happy Birthday to Libby! – but they all knew the truth, Libby got ripped off. Libby rarely felt less than ripped off.”

— Gillian Flynn

165. “Smile, it can’t be that bad! Yeah, actually, it can, jackwad.”

— Gillian Flynn

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

— Gillian Flynn

167. “I think there is something very relatable in the idea that you hit a certain age, later in your life, where you realize you have to pick up the rug and see what’s underneath it and deal with stuff.”

— Gillian Flynn

168. “So there it came, out of nowhere, as Rand begged for his daughter’s return: a killer smile.”

— Gillian Flynn

169. “I am a liar and a thief. Don’t let me into your house, and if you do, don’t leave me alone. I take things. You can catch me with your string of fine pearls clickering in my greedy little paws, and I’ll tell you they reminded me of my mother’s and I just had to touch them, just for a second, and I’m so sorry, I don’t know what came over me. My mom never owned any jewelry that didn’t turn her skin green, but you won’t know that. And I’ll still swipe the pearls when you’re not looking.”

— Gillian Flynn

170. “I heard you could do that – buy books by the yard, turn them into furniture. People are dumb. I’ll never get over how dumb people are.”

— Gillian Flynn

171. “I’m not good at things like that: haircuts or oil changes or dentist visits. When I moved into my bungalow, I spent the first three months swaddled in blankets because I couldn’t deal with getting the gas turned on. It’s been turned off three times in the past few years, because sometimes I can’t quite bring myself to write a check. I have trouble maintaining.”

— Gillian Flynn

172. “It makes me think that everyone is very wrong, that love should have many conditions. Love should require both partners to be their very best at all times. Unconditional love is an undisciplined love, and as we all have seen, undisciplined love is disastrous.”

— Gillian Flynn

173. “It’s all too much for her, the cruelty of human beings.”

— Gillian Flynn

174. “He promised to take care of me, and yet I feel afraid. I feel like something is going wrong, very wrong, and that it will get even worse.”

— Gillian Flynn

175. “Tears ran down my mother’s cheeks and dripped loudly onto the leather purse she held in her lap. The woman next to her patted her hand. I slipped my notepad from my jacket pocket and began scribbling notes to one side until my mother slapped her hand on mine and hissed, “You are being disrespectful and embarrassing. Stop or I will make you leave.” I quit writing but kept the pad out, feeling stabbingly defiant. But still blushing.”

— Gillian Flynn

176. “You don’t ever want to be the wife who keeps her husband from playing poker.”

— Gillian Flynn

177. “I knew I liked her then, really liked her, this girl with an explanation for everything.”

— Gillian Flynn

178. “She is an incredibly intelligent idiot.”

— Gillian Flynn

179. “That’s the way plants down here work: The Mexicans get the shittiest, most dangerous jobs, and the whites still complain.”

— Gillian Flynn

180. “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

181. “When you finally stop an itch and realize it’s because you’ve ripped a hole in your skin.”

— Gillian Flynn

182. “It was one of those moments where you saved me, you made me laugh at just the right time.”

— Gillian Flynn

183. “No.” I folded in on myself, ignoring my meal, projecting glumness. 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

184. “Nick grew up with a father who never ever apologized, so when Nick feels he has screwed up he goes on offense.”

— Gillian Flynn

185. “Thirteen years old, I thought to myself, but I felt a spear of admiration for the girl. When I’d been sad, I hurt myself. Amma hurt other people. When I’d wanted attention, I’d submitted myself to boys: Do what you want; just like me. Amma’s sexual offerings seemed a form of aggression. Long skinny legs and slim wrists and high, babied voice, all aimed like a gun. Do what I want; I might like you.”

— Gillian Flynn

186. “They have no harsh edges with each other, no spiny conflicts, they ride through life like conjoined jellyfish – expanding and contracting instinctively, filling each other’s spaces liquidly.”

— Gillian Flynn

187. “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?”

— Gillian Flynn

188. “It infects you. It ruined me.”

— Gillian Flynn

189. “Ever been in a spelling bee as a kid? That snowy second after the announcement of the word as you sift your brain to see if you can spell it? It was like that, the blank panic.”

— Gillian Flynn

190. “And I didn’t realize. I didn’t take into account. Just. You know, this is real to you. I mean, I know that, we know that, but we don’t at the same time. We really just never will. I don’t think. Totally get that. You spend so much time discussing and debating it becomes... But. Well. I’m sorry.”

— Gillian Flynn

191. “We’re into this barrage of pop culture – you know, TV, movies, the Internet. We become creatures that we’ve made up, made of certain different flotsam from pop culture and certain different personas that are in style.”

— Gillian Flynn

192. “People judge. Fast.”

— Gillian Flynn

193. “Love should require both partners to be their very best at all times.”

— Gillian Flynn

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

— Gillian Flynn

195. “DNA to me was some sort of magical element, some glowing goo that was always getting people out of prison.”

— Gillian Flynn

196. “His brain was sticky, phrases and snatches of songs were always wedging themselves in there. Annihilation. He saw flashes of Norse barbarians swinging axes. He wondered for a second, only a second, if he’d been reincarnated, and this was some leftover memory, flittering down like ash. Then he picked up his bike and banished the idea. He wasn’t ten.”

— Gillian Flynn

197. “There was just me, left wretched in my childhood bed.”

— Gillian Flynn

198. “We are all working from the same dog-eared script.”

— Gillian Flynn

199. “It sounded artificial, like a beauty contestant pledging world peace.”

— Gillian Flynn

200. “And when I picture his mind, I hear my name as a shy crystal ping that occurs once, maybe twice, a day and quickly subsides. I just wish he thought about me as much as I do him.”

— Gillian Flynn