Top 350 Gillian Flynn Quotes (2024 Update)
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201. “Get all that bad stuff out, sweetheart. Don’t stop till it’s all out.”

— Gillian Flynn

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

— Gillian Flynn

203. “You know how people sometimes say they have to hurt because if they don’t, they’re so numb they won’t feel anything?”

— Gillian Flynn

204. “She talked to me because we had the same chemicals in our blood: shame, anger, greed. Unjustified nostalgia.”

— Gillian Flynn

205. “I paced a bit, tried to remember how to breathe right, how to calm my skin. But it blared at me. Sometimes my scars have a mind of their own.”

— Gillian Flynn

206. “My imagination is more tweaked by imagining the lives of the people who were there before us. I don’t need to give myself the willies. I’m quite good at that – I can freak myself out wherever I am.”

— Gillian Flynn

207. “Because isn’t that the point of every relationship: to be known by someone else, to be understood?”

— Gillian Flynn

208. “I was lying in bed thinking about killing myself, a hobby of mine. Indulgent afternoon daydreaming: A shotgun, my mouth, a bang and my head jerking once, twice, blood on the wall. Spatter, splatter.”

— Gillian Flynn

209. “She defines and eliminates problems. She’s practical in an evil way.”

— Gillian Flynn

210. “In Amma’s snideness, I caught a whiff of desperation and righteousness. Like she’d whined at breakfast: I wish I’d be murdered. Amma didn’t want anyone to get more attention than her. Certainly not girls who couldn’t compete when they were alive.”

— Gillian Flynn

211. “Another time-honored ploy: A woman is less likely to throw you out if she’s offered her hospitality. If you have allergies or a cold, asking for a tissue is even better. Women love vulnerability. Most women.”

— Gillian Flynn

212. “Those words had been the bane of my childhood, a constant reminder that nothing turned out right, not just for me but for anyone, and that’s why someone had invented a saying like that. So we’d all know that we’d never have what we needed.”

— Gillian Flynn

213. “But I appreciate a straightforward apology the way a tone-deaf person enjoys a fine piece of music. I can’t do it, but I can applaud it in others.”

— Gillian Flynn

214. “Everyone who keeps a secret, itches to tell it.”

— Gillian Flynn

215. “Lyle Wirth looked like a serial killer. Which meant he probably wasn’t one. If you were chopping up hookers or eating runaways, you’d try to look normal.”

— Gillian Flynn

216. “Why bother? It’s impossible to compete with the dead.”

— Gillian Flynn

217. “She had an invisible friend, a giant stuffed bear she called Ben. What kind of kid has an imaginary friend that’s a stuffed animal? She collected hair ribbons and arranged them in alphabetical order by color name. She was the kind of girl who exploited her cuteness with such joy you couldn’t begrudge her.”

— Gillian Flynn

218. “I had that overwhelming feeling I get when I’m about to give up on a plan, that big rush of air when I realize that my stroke of genius has flaws, and I don’t have the brains or energy to fix them.”

— Gillian Flynn

219. “Everyone has a moment where life goes off the rails. Mine was the day Marian died. The day I picked up that knife is a tight second.”

— Gillian Flynn

220. “I finally understood – nearly twenty years too late.”

— Gillian Flynn

221. “Don’t be a scared, dickless boy all your life, letting people push you around, letting people bring up the fear in you.”

— Gillian Flynn

222. “I would never steer a fellow sufferer from the relief of a blackout.”

— Gillian Flynn

223. “Millions of dollars later, and neither of them were happy. Money is wasted on the rich.”

— Gillian Flynn

224. “I could feel the night hanging on me like a soft, damp bedgown.”

— Gillian Flynn

225. “I’m not just pretty anymore, I am pretty for my age.”

— Gillian Flynn

226. “She was wearing a black pantsuit with a pale pink turtleneck underneath, a painfully aspirational look for a stripper.”

— Gillian Flynn

227. “It was one of the few stories we told the same way.”

— Gillian Flynn

228. “She was clearly rich. Her handbag was too plain to be anything but incredibly expensive.”

— Gillian Flynn

229. “I like other people’s things better. They come with other people’s history.”

— Gillian Flynn

230. “I can feel a better version of me somewhere in there – hidden behind a liver or attached to a bit of spleen.”

— Gillian Flynn

231. “Against the far wall was a wire cage holding a pack of unblinking bunnies. World’s dumbest pet, I thought. Who would want an animal that sat, quivered, and shat everywhere? They say you can litter-box train them, but they lie.”

— Gillian Flynn

232. “I really wanted the book to make money, in an obsessive childish way – that feeling that if I wanted it enough, it should happen. It should happen.”

— Gillian Flynn

233. “I was never really on my side in any argument. I liked the Old Testament spitefulness of the phrase got what she deserved.”

— Gillian Flynn

234. “I remember at one point starting a goofy story about a childhood field trip here, and I saw her eyes go blank, and I got secretly furious, spent ten minutes just winding myself up – because at this point of our marriage, I was so used to being angry with her, it felt almost enjoyable, like gnawing on a cuticle: You know you should stop, that it doesn’t really feel as good as you think, but you can’t quit grinding away.”

— Gillian Flynn

235. “You are turning me into what I never have been and never wanted to be, a nag, because you are not living up to your end of a very basic contract. Don’t do that, it’s not okay to do.”

— Gillian Flynn

236. “My brother slaughtered my family when I was seven. My mom, two sisters, gone: bang bang, chop chop, choke choke.”

— Gillian Flynn

237. “I appreciate a straightforward apology the way a tone-deaf person enjoys a fine piece of music.”

— Gillian Flynn

238. “The only line that pisses me off faster is when some drunk, ham-faced dude in a bar sees me trying to get past him and barks: Smile, it can’t be that bad! Yeah, actually, it can, jackwad.”

— Gillian Flynn

239. “Because every morning you have to wake up and be you.”

— Gillian Flynn

240. “We Got Llamas!” Odd words to see in neon.”

— Gillian Flynn

241. “No wedding ring. I wondered when I began to notice such things.”

— Gillian Flynn

242. “You can like an immoral character because she’s interesting, not because you want to have her over for dinner.”

— Gillian Flynn

243. “Whenever I see news stories about children who were killed by their parents, I think: But how could it be? They cared enough to give this kid a name, they had a moment – at least one moment – when they sifted through all the possibilities and picked one specific name for their child, decided what they would call their baby. How could you kill something you cared enough to name?”

— Gillian Flynn

244. “In a few years you may find a Starbucks, which will bring the town what it yearns for: prepackaged, preapproved mainstream hipness.”

— Gillian Flynn

245. “That’s what I did, though – I had angry, defensive conversations in my head, got mad at things that hadn’t even happened yet. Yet.”

— Gillian Flynn

246. “I can feel a better version of me somewhere.”

— Gillian Flynn

247. “He’s as smooth and shallow as glass.”

— Gillian Flynn

248. “Nothing to it but to do it.”

— Gillian Flynn

249. “I never worked holidays, because holiday hand jobs are sad for everyone.”

— Gillian Flynn

250. “For so many years, my husband has lauded the emotional solidity of midwesterners: stoic, humble, without affectation! But these aren’t the kinds of people who provide good memoir material. Imagine the jacket copy: People behaved mostly well and then they died.”

— Gillian Flynn