# Gillian Flynn

Gillian Schieber Flynn (February 24, 1971) is an American writer.

## Quotes

* I wanted to make it clear that the show’s about a matriarchy. I wanted it to be clear that power can be ugly, and a matriarchy is just as ugly as a patriarchy. It may look a little different, but power is bloody.
** On how the matriarchy is portrayed in Sharp Objects in “Gillian Flynn Isn’t Going to Write the Kind of Women You Want” in Vanity Fair (2018 Jun 28)
* …I also wanted to make sure no one tried to make her “save the cat.” To me, Camille is an inherently kind person despite everything that’s happened to her. And you see that when you walk through the day with Camille. You see how she treats people. But she’s not running around saving babies and kittens just so the audience can be sure she’s a good person.
** On how she hoped the television version of Sharp Objects would stay true to the character of Camille in “Gillian Flynn Isn’t Going to Write the Kind of Women You Want” in Vanity Fair (2018 Jun 28)
* I think there’s a deep societal fear of female rage, partly because it hasn’t been experienced a lot. Men—I speak in vast generalities—are often very afraid of what they don’t know how to handle. And they haven’t had to handle female rage a lot, and they think they need to handle it.
** On how she perceives female rage in “Gillian Flynn Isn’t Going to Write the Kind of Women You Want” in Vanity Fair (2018 Jun 28)
* It’s incredibly misogynist to tell me I can only write a certain type of woman. Because that’s saying women must be a certain type of person. That puts us back to the Stone Age—like women are saints and therefore not human and if we stray beyond that model, we’ll be severely punished. It denies us any humanity. It doesn’t even bother me. It just bounces off me. It’s such a ridiculous notion that my novels are misogynist because I don’t write the kind of women you want.
** On her novels being called misogynistic in “Gillian Flynn Isn’t Going to Write the Kind of Women You Want” in Vanity Fair (2018 Jun 28)
* I loved being scared as a kid. I loved the darker side of humanity. That was in my brain, even from a very early age. I was always thinking, “What could be the scariest outcome of this situation?” My cousins and I were kind of raised in a pack together—all girls. They always wanted to be princesses. I always wanted to be a witch. Or a killer. My head just went in that direction. Maybe because my father was a film professor, I developed a taste for Alfred Hitchcock. Films like Psycho scared me just the right amount. They didn’t haunt my dreams in a terrible way. I like that sensation of being scared. I’ve always been one of those people who wants to know what’s underneath the rock, what’s down the corner, what’s down the blind alley.
** On processing fear as a child in “GILLIAN FLYNN BRINGS HER MID-WESTERN NOIR TO A BOIL” in Interview (2018 Nov 12)
* If you are someone who reads books to feel like you have a friend on the page, my book is not going to be the book for you…I write for people who are readers the way I'm a reader. I don't care if I dislike a character; I care if I find them interesting or they make me laugh, or if I'm trying to figure them out. I am always more interested in that.
** On what she might say to potential readers in “The Gone Girl phenomenon: Gillian Flynn speaks out” in The Guardian (2014 Oct 3)

### Gone Girl (2012)

    All page numbers are from the hardcover first edition, published by Crown Publishers, ISBN 978-0-307-58836-4, 50th printing
    The chapters in the book are not numbered, and titled only with a date stamp
    All italics as in the book
* I am fat with love! Husky with ardor! Morbidly obese with devotion! A happy, busy bumblebee of marital enthusiasm. I positively hum around him, fussing and fixing. I have become a strange thing. I have become a wife. I find myself steering the ship of conversations—bulkily, unnaturally—just so I can say his name aloud. I have become a wife, I have become a bore, I have been asked to forfeit my Independent Young Feminist card. I don’t care.
** p. 38
* Sleep is like a cat: it only comes to you if you ignore it.
** p. 57
* …soldiers on the battlefield of consumerism, armed with vinyl-covered checkbooks and quilted handbags.
** p. 72
* We were the first human beings who would never see anything for the first time. We stare at the wonders of the world, dull-eyed, underwhelmed. Mona Lisa, the Pyramids, the Empire State Building. Jungle animals on attack, ancient icebergs collapsing, volcanoes erupting. I can’t recall a single amazing thing I have seen firsthand that I didn’t immediately reference to a movie or TV show. A fucking commercial.
** p. 72
* I can see people milling about under the fluorescent lights. It’s the kind of place where people mill about.
** p. 98
* I’m so much happier now that I’m dead.
** p. 219
* There are variations to the window dressing, but believe me, he wants Cool Girl, who is basically the girl who likes every fucking thing he likes and doesn’t ever complain. (How do you know you’re not Cool Girl? Because he says things like: “I like strong women.” If he says that to you, he will at some point fuck someone else. Because “I like strong women” is code for “I hate strong women.”)
** p. 223
* The media has saturated the legal environment. With the Internet, Facebook, YouTube, there’s no such thing as an unbiased jury anymore. No clean slate. Eighty, ninety percent of the case is decided before you get in the court room. So why not use it—control the story.
** p. 312
* You can’t be as in love as we were and not have it invade your bone marrow. Our kind of love can go into remission, but it’s always waiting to return. Like the world’s sweetest cancer.
** p. 392
* I don’t want to be married to a woman like you. I want to be married to a normal person.
** p. 393
* She already has the righteous, eye-rolling cadence of a conspiracy crackpot. She might as well wrap her head in foil.
** p. 399
* “My gosh, Nick, why are you so wonderful to me? He was supposed to say: You deserve it. I love you. But he said, “Because I feel sorry for you.” “Why?” “Because every morning you have to wake up and be you.”
** p. 415

## Quotes about Gillian Flynn

* I’m typically not into thrillers, but her books are so pleasurable to read. I can stay up all night reading them because I simply can’t live without knowing what happens next. Her women characters are so flawed and broken and interesting. Those are my favorite kind of characters for reasons that are probably very obvious.
** Erika Sánchez interview (2022)