Top 190 Quotes & Sayings by Gillian Flynn - Page 2

I love a good worst-case scenario. My brain just kind of works that way. I like that idea of how much a person can get away with, and why.

The best crime reporters don't mind charging in - but they also know how to do it as decent human beings.

I assumed that 'Gone Girl' would do incrementally better than 'Dark Places,' and that would be great. So the fact that it did more than that was kind of an incredibly pleasant surprise.

I am not someone who has hobbies. I have tried knitting, and I can't figure it out.

You have to be pretty selfless to have a child, who doesn't give a lot back to you.

I like the idea that people who see 'Gone Girl' are possibly going to come out with incredibly different reactions to it - not just between men and women, but if you are in a good relationship or a bad relationship. Everyone is going to bring their own bundle of prejudices and viewpoints and experiences to it.

I would love to do a full-scale graphic novel.

The midwest is great because it hasn't been entirely claimed. There's more room to write about it; it's harder to write about New York, because even if you've never been there, you think you know what it's like. To do it in any sort of fresh way is trickier.

My first two novels featured narrators who were aggressively unattached: They couldn't form any sort of genuine relationship. So I had thoroughly explored the geography of loneliness and isolation.

I want books to give me insight into the way people's brains work and hearts work, and that's what engages me.

Books and movies are kind of my two great loves. I don't have too many other actual hobbies. That's pretty much it.

I'm probably a guy's girl, although I hate that phrase. I tend to have more close male friends than I do female friends, and I always have. I would say that of my 10 close friends, seven are men.

I love Joyce Carol Oates. I love Margaret Atwood, T.C. Boyle. Arthur Phillips is always consistent.

I'm not hyper-opinionated, but when I do have an opinion, I'm very stubborn, and I want to persuade everyone to my point of view.

I was very lucky to grow up in a household that really valued storytelling and didn't find it frivolous.

I've always been a mystery fan. My very first grown-up book, I distinctly remember going to the library and my mom helping me pick out an Agatha Christie book. I was in fifth grade or something and very proud of being in the adult fiction aisles. I tore through 'The Mysterious Affair at Styles.'

I have two kids, and anyone who has a kid in order to feel loved is going to be in trouble because kids are first and foremost all about themselves. They'll say they love you, but 10 seconds later they'll turn on you.

Writing has certainly helped me explore about 20,000 versions of my authentic self. I suppose that's what most writers discover if they write long enough: there are a lot of selves roaming around in there.

I was always someone who wanted to write. I was a real shy, bookworm-ish kid, and I think my earliest stuff was fairly dark.

In marriage, it's best to keep perspective. Get out of your head and get some perspective.

Because I'm a woman writing about women who do bad things, that's somehow very 'other.' When men write that, it's called a novel. It's just a book.

I do love 'The Turn of the Screw' - I just think that one's always so disturbing.

The skill set that lets you be alone in your pyjamas for two years writing a book is not the same skill set that lets you go on television shows like 'The View' or 'Late Night With Jimmy Fallon.'

Even good characters have their dark sides, and I think it is important that women aren't seen as innately good.

There's a book by Anne Rivers Siddons called 'The House Next Door' that I just think is one of the all-time great haunted-house stories. I think that's one of the all-time greatest.

I think everyone self-mythologizes.

I mostly go under the radar, which is fantastic because I would not be a good famous person.

I love Robin Wright's character in 'House of Cards' because she's a bona fide villain. She's a not-nice person in a believable way; you can see her working in the world.

I think women are very ambidextrous. We don't think twice about reading a book or a movie starring guys. But for guys, it's, like, 'Oh my God, that's a woman thing.' So with my son, I very carefully portion out the female heroes and characters to make sure he's getting an equal amount.

What I tell myself is that there is never going to be another 'Gone Girl' for me. I mean, I really believe that. I think I'll write other good books; I have faith in that.

I love the way the Victorians found a way to put faces in everything: you know, furniture and marble and, you know, everywhere you turn around - the banister, you know, there's someone looking at you.

Ever since I was a child, I've been a huge comic and graphic novel fan, but I've never tried writing one before.

I don't think I'm naturally a good person. I think some people have an innate goodness to them, and I am sort of proud of the fact that I kind of keep myself in check, probably because I have awesome parents.

I've always read in order to figure out people more, and that includes bad people and good people.

The number of mystery and horror writers I've met who are just the sanest and the nicest people... it's crazy. Maybe it's because the writing gets something out of the system?

I spent a lot of - too much of - my childhood watching movies and thinking about movies.

For me, suspense is always harder and better than going for the quick, outright scare.

I love 'Fatal Attraction.'

I've always had a fondness for the Gothic. That's what kind of stories attract me: Why do people do bad things?

I think that women really entwine with the people that they become close to in a way that men don't - and so, when they are forced to disentwine, you can't remove the vines without doing some damage.

There are so many good books, I don't want to only read within one particular type.

I've wondered if 'Harry Potter' would have been as big if it was 'Harriet Potter.' Now that I've written a screenplay - and raising a son in particular - I'm looking at story content and realizing how limited women are onscreen.

I always loved ghost stories and haunted house stories, whether they were done in a fantasy way or done in a realistic way.

I get really tense during the first draft. Really tense. That's not great for my family, because the first draft usually takes about a year.

I've never been interested in watching or reading anything because it's the hero's story. I don't feel the need to be inspired by the character or learn a lesson. I feel the need to be engaged by them.

Being a novelist, you can roam around with a story and indulge yourself.

I've seen movies that are slavishly devoted to books but don't work because they haven't turned it into a movie: they've turned it into a dramatisation of the different scenes.

One of my biggest peeves is when the writer hasn't given you enough information to figure everything out. You should be able to go back to the beginning of 'Gone Girl,' after you've already read it and you know everything, and say, 'Check - check - yes, she gave us that information.'

It's important to tell stories, and it's a worthwhile thing to do.

Love makes you want to be a better man. But maybe love, real love, also gives you permission to just be the man you are.

A town so suffocating and small, you tripped over people you hated every day. People who knew things about you. It's the kind of place that leaves a mark.

Sleep is like a cat: It only comes to you if you ignore it.

The truly frightening flaw in humanity is our capacity for cruelty - we all have it.

My mother had always told her kids: if you're about to do something, and you want to know if it's a bad idea, imagine seeing it printed in the paper for all the world to see.

Dark sides are important. They should be nurtured like nasty black orchids.

The face you give the world tells the world how to treat you.

My brain goes very easily into the darkness. It always has. There are people who like to see what's under the rock and people who don't, and for some reason I've always been one of those to say, 'Hey, let's flip over that rock.'

Problems always start long before you really, really see them.

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

Friends see most of each other’s flaws. Spouses see every awful last bit.