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e767685
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Natalie was buried in the family plot, next to a gravestone that already bore her parents' names. I know the wisdom, that no parents should see their child die, that such an event is like nature spun backward. But it's the only way to truly keep your child. Kid grow up, they forge more potent allegiances. They find a spouse or a lover. They will not be buried with you. The Keenes, however, will remain the purest form of family. Underground.
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child
family
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Gillian Flynn |
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2fa96d7
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I regretted what a serious teenager I'd been: There were no posters of pop stars or favorite movies, no girlish collection of photos or corsages. Instead there were paintings of sailboats, proper pastel pastorals, a portrait of Eleanor Roosevelt. The latter was particularly strange, since I'd known little about Mrs. Roosevelt, except that she was good, which at the time I suppose was enough. Given my druthers now, I'd prefer a snapshot of W..
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revenge
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Gillian Flynn |
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b938fd3
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I'm not really a nerd; I only aspire to be one.
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Gillian Flynn |
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665a32d
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Children digest terror differently. The boy saw a horror, and that horror became the wicked witch of fairy tales, the cruel snow queen.
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Gillian Flynn |
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7733b32
|
Blame the economy, blame bad luck, blame my parents, blame your parents, blame the Internet, blame people who use the Internet.
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blame
disagreements
judgmental
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Gillian Flynn |
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0ab3da3
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She is an incredibly intelligent idiot
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Gillian Flynn |
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a3d30ef
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Just as Amy took the credit for making me my best self, I had to take the blame for bringing the madness to bloom in Amy. There were a million men who would have loved, honored, and obeyed Amy and considered themselves lucky to do so. Confident, self-assured, real men who wouldn't have forced her to pretend to be anything but her own perfect, rigid, demanding, brilliant, creative, fascinating, rapacious, megalomaniac self.
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Gillian Flynn |
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30019ff
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I knew you could do it, I knew you could, Libby," she mumbled into my hair, warm and smoky. "Do what?" "Try just a little harder." --
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Gillian Flynn |
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079b5da
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I know, I know, I'm being a girl.
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girl
girl-problems
over-thinking
stereotypes
thoughts
women
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Gillian Flynn |
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92295b4
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Isn't a smile a girl's best weapon?
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Gillian Flynn |
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bb7167d
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But it's tempting to be Cool Girl. For someone like me, who likes to win, it's tempting to want to be the girl every guy wants. When I met Nick, I knew immediately that was what he wanted, and for him, I guess I was willing to try. I will accept my portion of blame. The thing is, I was crazy about him at first. I found him perversely exotic, a good ole Missouri boy. He was so damn nice to be around. He teased things out in me that I didn't ..
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Gillian Flynn |
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2b3e250
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The Victorians, especially southern Victorians, needed a lot of room to stray away from each other, to duck tuberculosis and flu, to avoid rapacious lust, to wall themselves away from sticky emotion. Extra space is always good.
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Gillian Flynn |
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e3557a4
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I remember always being baffled by other children. I would be at a birthday party and watch the other kids giggling and making faces, and I would try to do that, too, but I wouldn't understand . I would site there with the tight elastic thread of the birthday hat parting the pudge of my underchin, with the grainy frosting of the cake bluing my teeth, and I would try to figure out why it was fun.
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fiction
not-fitting-in
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Gillian Flynn |
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3315599
|
My thank-yous always come out rather labored. I often don't give them at all. People do what they're supposed to do and then wait for you to pile on the appreciation -- they're like frozen-yogurt employees who put out cups for tips.
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Gillian Flynn |
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ce44eeb
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you'd literally lie, cheat, and steal -hell, kill- to convince people you are a good guy
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Gillian Flynn |
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9df4b3b
|
She talked to me because we had the same chemicals in our blood: shame, anger, greed. Unjustified nostalgia.
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Gillian Flynn |
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e2a66c3
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Draw a picture of my soul, and it'd be a scribble with fangs.
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Gillian Flynn |
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4dcc710
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Because isn't that the point of every relationship: to be known by someone else, to be understood?
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Gillian Flynn |
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b3f8078
|
I was the girl who battles oblivion and won. The chances were about 1 percent, but I did it.
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Gillian Flynn |
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97f44f6
|
I think maybe, when I was very young, I witnessed a chaste cheek kiss between the two when it was impossible to avoid. Christmas, birthdays. Dry lips. On their best married days, their communications were entirely transactional: 'We're out of milk again.' (I'll get some today.) 'I need this ironed properly.' (I'll do that today.) 'How hard is it to buy milk?' (Silence.) 'You forgot to call the plumber.' (Sigh.) 'Goddammit, put on your coat,..
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abusive
abusive-relationship
abusive-relationships
bad-parenting
broken-home
childhood
childhood-memories
communication
depression
divorce
family
father
fight
fighting
fights
heartbreak
love
love-lost
mother
parenthood
parents
parents-and-children
relationship
sexism
silence
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Gillian Flynn |
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26a754a
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Every tragedy that happens in the world happens to my mother,
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Gillian Flynn |
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cebe1e4
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Nick loved me. A six-o kind of love: He looooooved me. But he didn't love me, me. Nick loved a girl who doesn't exist. I was pretending, the way I often did, pretending to have a personality. I can't help it, it's what I've always done: The way some women change fashion regularly, I change personalities.
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Gillian Flynn |
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6cc268f
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I'm here, I said, and it felt shockingly comforting, those words. When I'm panicked, I say them aloud to myself. I'm here.
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Gillian Flynn |
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2fac25c
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But I was born bent out of shape. I could picture myself coming out of the womb crooked and wrong. It never takes much for me to lose patience. The phrase fuck you may not rest on the tip of my tongue, but it's near. Midtongue.
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Gillian Flynn |
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f7fe1ca
|
We were born in the '70s, back when twins were rare, a bit magical: cousins of the unicorn, siblings of the elves.
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elves
family
love
magic
old-fashioned
rare
siblings
superstition
the-70s
the-seventies
twins
unicorn
unicorns
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Gillian Flynn |
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a165455
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You both find the exact same things worth remembering. You have the same rhythm. Click. You just know each other. All of a sudden you see reading in bed and waffles on Sunday and laughing at nothing & it's so far beyond fine that you know you can never go back. That fast. You think: Oh, here is the rest of my life. It's finally arrived.
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Gillian Flynn |
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f18f21a
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My parents are worried, of course, but how can I feel sorry for them, since they made me this way and then deserted me?
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Gillian Flynn |
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15e65d3
|
I was already tired of talking, and I'd said very little.
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Gillian Flynn |
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4bff69f
|
Amy made me believe I was exceptional, that I was up to her level of play. That was both our making and undoing Because I couldn't handle the demands of greatness. I began craving ease and averageness.
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Gillian Flynn |
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4483d85
|
I was not that man: I didn't hate and fear all women. I was a one-woman misogynist. If I despised only Amy, focused all my fury and rage and venom on the one woman who deserved it, that didn't make me my father. That made me sane.
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Gillian Flynn |
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f55ebb6
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He wore a tiny turquoise stud earring I always associated with Dungeons and Dragons types. Men who own ferrets and think magic tricks are cool.
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dungeons-and-dragons
ferrets
geeks
nerds
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Gillian Flynn |
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f0cb4b4
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I am smiling a big adopted-orphan smile as I write this ... I still love scribbling the word - WRITER - any time on a form, questionnaire, document asks for my occupation. Fine, I write personality quizzes, I don't write about the Great Issues of the Day, but I think it's fair to say I am a writer ... ('Adopted-orphan smile', I mean, that's not bad, come on.)
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compulsive-lying
crazy-bitch
ego
egotistical
fantasy
liar
lie
lies
out-of-touch-with-reality
pretending
reality
self-righteous
smile
smiling
superiority-complex
vain
vainity
wannabe
wannabewriter
writer
writing
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Gillian Flynn |
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fe46dd6
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People have to do awful things for money.
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money-issues
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Gillian Flynn |
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3610317
|
I am, after all, an adult, a grown man, a useful human being, even though I lost the career that made me all these things. I won't make that mistake again.
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careers
employment
failure
getting-fired
human-nature
job-losses
learning-from-mistakes
life
life-lessons
losing-hope
losing-self
loss
mistake
mistakes
self-worth
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Gillian Flynn |
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21d435d
|
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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ba9346b
|
All of a sudden you see reading in bed and waffles on Sunday and laughing at nothing and his mouth on yours. And it's so far beyond fine that you know you can never go back to fine.
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gone-girl
love
|
Gillian Flynn |
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9495507
|
I appreciate a straightforward apology the way a tone-deaf person enjoys a fine piece of music.
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Gillian Flynn |
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28da5cb
|
It's humbling to become the very thing you once mocked.
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cool-girl
gone-girl
|
Gillian Flynn |
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9ff5ecb
|
I take a giant breath, roll my anger up into a red rubber ball, and mentally kick it out into space.
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Gillian Flynn |
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ef9ae01
|
For a long time Cool Girl offended me. I used to see men - friends, coworkers, strangers - giddy over these awful pretender women, and I'd want to sit these men down and calmly say: You are not dating a woman, you are dating a woman who has watched too many movies written by socially awkward men who'd like to believe that this kind of woman exists and might kiss them. I'd want to grab the poor guy by the lapels or messenger bag and say: The..
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Gillian Flynn |
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a8a991f
|
My sense of weightlessness, I think, comes from the fact that I know so little about my past..
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Gillian Flynn |
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7a7ac9f
|
If you own a bar on your own, you're a player; if you own it with your beloved twin sister, you're-" "Irish."
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irish
|
Gillian Flynn |
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8657846
|
I often don't say things out loud, even when I should.
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|
Gillian Flynn |
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98f334b
|
If ifs and buts were candies and nuts we'd all have a very Merry Christmas,
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Gillian Flynn |