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4f6036a
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On a nearby telephone pole flapped a grainy photocopy of an unsmiling teen, missing since October 2007. Two more blocks, and what I thought was a copy of the same poster turned out to be a new missing girl, vanished in June 2008. Both girls were unkempt, surly, which explained why they weren't getting the Lisette Stephens treatment. I made a mental note to take a smiling, pretty photo of myself in case I ever disappeared.
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Gillian Flynn |
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3aa6cc5
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No one saves an e-mail, because it's so inherently impersonal. I worry about posterity in general. All the great love letters - from Simone de Beauvoir to Sartre, from Samuel Clemens to his wife, Olivia - I don't know, I always think about what will be lost--
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Gillian Flynn |
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3cdee4b
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My parents' cherished heirloom looks ridiculous in the new house. But then all our New York stuff does. Our dignified elephant of a chesterfield with its matching baby ottoman sits in the living room looking stunned, as if it got sleep-darted in its natural environment and woke up in this strange new captivity, surrounded by faux-posh carpet and synthetic wood and unveined walls. I do miss our old place -
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Gillian Flynn |
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f20341d
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I like the name. Like in Breakfast at Tiffany's and Audrey Hepburn's cat was named Cat.' We
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Gillian Flynn |
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5b627ae
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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
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Gillian Flynn |
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b9ff0e6
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It is one of those big-smelling days, when people bring the outdoors in with them, the scent of rain on their sleeves, in their hair.
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Gillian Flynn |
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68549dc
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I don't know that we are actually human at this point, those of us who are like most of us, who grew up with movies and TV and now the internet. If we are betrayed, we know the words to say; when a loved one dies, we know the words to say. If we want to play the stud or the smart-ass or the fool, we know the words to say. 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, actua..
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Gillian Flynn |
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d9a043a
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I had to know I could love a person unconditionally, that I could make a little creature feel constantly welcome and wanted no matter what. That I could be a different kind of father than my dad was.
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Gillian Flynn |
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1d971ad
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So I killed a hobo today.....hahahaha! Ah, we have fun.
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Gillian Flynn |
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65d0c9d
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The whole book made me want to punch Amy right in her stupid, spotless vagina
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Gillian Flynn |
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35225d6
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The world is black and then, showtime!
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Gillian Flynn |
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6a62e81
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so I turned on the radio and of course it was a Tom Petty song--is there ever a time you turn on the radio and don't hear a Tom Petty song?--so
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Gillian Flynn |
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beb5dd4
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She began walking away from me, down the hallway--luminous white living rooms and sitting rooms and reading rooms blooming out on all sides--and I studied her. It was the first time we'd seen each other in almost a year. My hair was a different color--brown from red--but she didn't seem to notice. She looked exactly the same, though, not much older than I am now, although she's in her late forties. Glowing pale skin,
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Gillian Flynn |
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9c0e4e0
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One snowy April night, I felt so lonely. I was drinking warm amaretto with Bleecker and reading, lying on the floor as the snow came down, listening to old scratchy albums, like Nick and I used to
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Gillian Flynn |
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4472ff2
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We were the first human beings who would never see anything for the first time.
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Gillian Flynn |
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8e5a28b
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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.
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Gillian Flynn |
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ec307fe
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nny lst bkhyr, lkny swf 'kwn bkhyr, lknny lan l 'sh`r b'nny bkhyr
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Gillian Flynn |
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3a5ce9d
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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. Marybeth
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Gillian Flynn |
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bda8e52
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Shotgun blasts in a small hallway. The panicked, jaybird cries of my mother, still trying to save her kids with half her head gone.
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Gillian Flynn |
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fbcc113
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Kissi frowned ar him, then looked at me for explanation. I widened my eyes, grimaced: the look women give each other when they're embarrassed of the men they're with.
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Gillian Flynn |
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94fa874
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our first customer, a gray-haired woman in bifocals and
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Gillian Flynn |
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b3cc0bd
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I can't recall a single amazing thing I have seen firsthand that I didn't immediately reference to a movie or a TV show. A fucking commercial. You know the awful singsong of the blase: Seeeen it. I've literally seen it all, and the worst thing, the thing that makes me want to blow my brains out, is: The secondhand experience is always better. The image is crisper, the view is keener, the camera angle and the soundtrack manipulate my emotion..
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Gillian Flynn |
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5b94bc2
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But I'm a romantic. In real life, if Nick had killed me, I think he would have just rolled my body into a trash bag and driven me to one of the landfills in the sixty-mile radius. Just dispose of me. He'd have even taken a few items with him - the broken toaster that's not worth fixing, a pile of old VHS tapes he's been meaning to toss - to make the trip efficient.
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Gillian Flynn |
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f60589b
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Maybe I'd grow a garden of weeds.
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Gillian Flynn |
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3b68e77
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Tampon commercial, detergent commercial, maxipad commercial, Windex commercial. You'd think all women do is clean and bleed. And
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Gillian Flynn |
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bcf37cc
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Carl just needed to hear the clink of glasses, the glug of a drink being poured. I picked up the phone, shaking a tumbler of ice near the receiver so Carl could imagine his gin.
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Gillian Flynn |
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d34c712
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I'm not sure what all the fuss is about. But we are working backward: dinner first, then drinks in one of the little nooks Campbell has reserved, a mini-closet where you can lounge expensively in a place that's not too different from, say, your living room. But fine, it's fun to do the silly, trendy things sometimes. We are all overdressed in our little flashy frocks, our slasher heels, and we all eat small plates of food bites that are as ..
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Gillian Flynn |
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0a2f06e
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So I killed a hobo today, honey . . . hahahaha! Ah, we have fun! Nick
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Gillian Flynn |
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04bceae
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I have many friends who are married--not many who are happily married, but many married friends.
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Gillian Flynn |
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df7452f
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soldiers on the battlefield of consumerism, armed with vinyl-covered checkbooks and quilted handbags.
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Gillian Flynn |
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bd15b82
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I don't know that anything would be any good anywhere, so it's hard to gauge if this is better or worse, you know what I mean?" "Like: This place is miserable and I want to die, but I can't think of any place I'd rather be," I offered. He turned and stared at me, blue eyes mirroring the oval pool. "That's exactly what I mean." Get used to it, I thought."
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Gillian Flynn |
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59ec254
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Mom, Dad, Baby, they were three advanced people with three advanced degrees in psychology--they thought more before nine A.M. than most people thought all month.
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Gillian Flynn |
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498183b
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Brett: Husband! Father of my child! Dance partner, emergency grilled-cheese maker. The kind of fellow who knows how to pick the wine. The kind of fellow who looks great in a tux. Also a zombie-tux. The guy with the generous laugh and the glorious whistle. The guy who has the answer. The man who makes my child laugh till he falls down. The man who makes me laugh till I fall down. The guy who lets me ask all sorts of invasive, inappropriate, ..
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Gillian Flynn |
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a737ea5
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And yet, I felt it too: the house. Not necessarily malevolent, but...mindful. I could feel it studying me, does that make sense? It crowded me. One day, I was wiping down the floorboards, and suffered a sudden, slicing pain in my middle finger - as if I'd been bitten - and when I pulled it away, I was bleeding. I wrapped my finger tightly in one of my spare rags and watched the blood seep through. And I felt like something in the house was ..
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Gillian Flynn |
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eb9093a
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Kansas City, Missouri, not Kansas City, Kansas. There's a difference.
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Gillian Flynn |
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50d9567
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If you remove the bloody floorboards and water-stained tiles; if you destroy the beams that held Robert Carterhook's body, and you tear down the walls that absorbed the screams, do you take down the house? Can it be haunted if the actual guts - its internal organs - have been removed? Or does the nastiness linger in the air?
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Gillian Flynn |
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7733c9a
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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. You know the awful singsong of th..
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Gillian Flynn |
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268723d
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in the late '90s, the last gasp of the glory days, although no one knew it then. New York was packed with writers, real writers, because there were magazines, real magazines, loads of them. This was back when the Internet was still some exotic pet kept in the corner of the publishing world--throw some kibble at it, watch it dance on its little leash, oh quite cute, it definitely won't kill us in the night.
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Gillian Flynn |
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fcc7e29
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He teased things out in me that I didn't know existed: a lightness, a humor, an ease. It was as if he hollowed me out and filled me with feathers.
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Gillian Flynn |
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36f65da
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I started on the opening page of my own book. 'I am a cheating, weak-spined, women-fearing coward, and i am the hero of your story. Because the woman I cheated on - my wife, Amy Elliott Dunne - is a sociopath and a murderer.' Yes. I'd read that.
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Gillian Flynn |
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5f47eaa
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I suppose these questions stormcloud over every marriage: What are you thinking? How are you feeling? Who are you? What have we done to each other? What will we do?
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Gillian Flynn |
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e3b1360
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now her stomach knotted as she remembered the Free-Lunch kids and her patronizing smiles toward them as they presented their dog-eared cards, and the steamy cafeteria ladies would call it out: Free Lunch! And the boy next to her, buzz-haired and confident, would whisper inanely: There's no such thing as a free lunch. And she'd feel sorry for the kids, but not in a way that made her want to help, just in a way that made her not want to look ..
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Gillian Flynn |
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59d8643
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Throwing things near her but not exactly at her. I'm sure he told himself: I never hit her. I'm sure because of this technicality he never saw himself as an abuser. But he turned our family life into an endless road trip with bad directions and a rage-clenched driver, a vacation that never got a chance to be fun. Don't make me turn this car around. Please, really, turn it around.
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Gillian Flynn |
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2bfdd15
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I've always hovered above their stories, nodding in sympathy and thinking how foolish they are, these women, to let these things happen, how undisciplined. And now to be one of them! One of the women with the endless stories that make people nod sympathetically and think: Poor dumb bitch.
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Gillian Flynn |