|
d7c8e04
|
It's so strange to think: A year ago today, I was undoing my husband. Now I am almost done reassembling him.
|
|
|
Gillian Flynn |
|
df384cb
|
my mother would not be distracted from her grief. To this day it remains a hobby.
|
|
|
Gillian Flynn |
|
c18f4ea
|
If you let a man cancel plans or decline to do things for you, you lose.
|
|
|
Gillian Flynn |
|
c4158d6
|
Every phrase had to be captured on paper or it wasn't real, it slipped away. I'd see the words hanging in midair--Camille, pass the milk-- and anxiety coiled up in me as they began to fade, like jet exhaust. Writing them down, though, I had them. No worries that they'd become extinct. I was a lingual conservationist. I was the class freak, a tight, nervous eighth-grader frenziedly copying down phrases ("Mr. Feeney is totally gay," "Jamie Do..
|
|
invisible-things
writing
|
Gillian Flynn |
|
ca58229
|
Ninety degrees but the heat made me feel safe, like walking under water.
|
|
|
Gillian Flynn |
|
21a2c3e
|
in these shitty plastic days ...
|
|
a-new-era
a-new-world
change
changes
destruction
electronic-revolution
fake
human-nature
life-sucks
loss
new-age
plastic
stuck-in-a-rut
technology
the-good-days-are-gone
the-past
the-world
|
Gillian Flynn |
|
8cf995d
|
I heard you could do that--buy books by the yard, turn them into furniture. People are dumb. I'll never get over how dumb people are.
|
|
|
Gillian Flynn |
|
2929c58
|
Instead of asking yourself what happened, just accept that it happened. Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the Serenity Prayer.
|
|
|
Gillian Flynn |
|
2b530cc
|
He needed no foreplay for the interview, and I was grateful. It's like sweet-talking your date when you both know you're about to get laid.
|
|
journalist
|
Gillian Flynn |
|
f952c5b
|
Just got to keep on keeping on
|
|
|
Gillian Flynn |
|
1c6cd15
|
Tiene algo de perturbador, evocar un recuerdo calido y que te deje completamente frio.
|
|
|
Gillian Flynn |
|
80e808b
|
Most sows are repeatedly inseminated, brood after brood, till their bodies give way and they go to slaughter. But while they're still useful, they're made to nurse--strapped to their sides in a farrowing crate, legs apart, nipples exposed. Pigs are extremely smart, sociable creatures, and this forced assembly-line intimacy makes the nursing sows want to die. Which, as soon as they dry up, they do. Even the idea of this practice I find repul..
|
|
|
Gillian Flynn |
|
10be31d
|
One should never marry a man who doesn't own a decent set of scissors.
|
|
scissors
|
Gillian Flynn |
|
d59bc46
|
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 |
|
3065dc9
|
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. I don't usually feel that I am.
|
|
|
Gillian Flynn |
|
e10a740
|
It seemed to me that there was nothing new to be discovered ever again. Our society was utterly, ruinously derivative...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 firs..
|
|
|
Gillian Flynn |
|
0ec4bb9
|
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 |
|
1dfae17
|
What can I say about a man who knows how I think and still sleeps next to me with the lights off?
|
|
|
Gillian Flynn |
|
bacf341
|
She has never told me she loved me, and I never assumed she did.
|
|
|
Gillian Flynn |
|
13d49cb
|
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 average-ness, and I hated myself for it, and ultimately, I realized, I punished her for it. I turned her into the brittle, prickly thing she became. I had pretended to be one kind of man and revealed myself to be quite another. Worse, I convinced myself ..
|
|
|
Gillian Flynn |
|
e30f705
|
My husband is the most loyal man on the planet until he's not.
|
|
|
Gillian Flynn |
|
442f828
|
We had spent years battling for control of our marriage, of our love story, our life story. I had been thoroughly, finally outplayed. I created a manuscript, and she created a life.
|
|
|
Gillian Flynn |
|
4c36177
|
I would never steer a fellow sufferer from the relief of a blackout.
|
|
|
Gillian Flynn |
|
1e6a305
|
Libby wasn't a big talker - Michelle and Debby seemed to hog all her words. She made pronouncements: I like ponies. I hate spaghetti. I hate you. Like her mother, she had no poker face. No poker mood. It was all right there. When she wasn't angry or sad, she just didn't say much.
|
|
quiet
shy
shyness
speaking
talking
|
Gillian Flynn |
|
658560d
|
They're baffled by my singleness. A smart, pretty, nice girl like me, a girl with so many interests and enthusiasms, a cool job, a loving family. And let's say it: money. They knit their eyebrows and pretend to think of men they can set me up with, but we all know there's no one left, no one good left, and I know that they secretly think there's something wrong with me, something hidden away that makes me unsatisfiable, unsatisfying. The on..
|
|
|
Gillian Flynn |
|
1882eef
|
But I know I'll never sleep again. I can't close my eyes when I'm next to her. It's like sleeping with a spider.
|
|
|
Gillian Flynn |
|
515d025
|
I am absolutely, one hundred percent sincere right now- I have your back, and I won't fuck with you.
|
|
|
Gillian Flynn |
|
3728dc5
|
I think, immediately, that there is something wrong with us, perhaps unfixable, if my husband wouldn't think to tell me this. Sometimes I feel it's his personal game, that he's in some sort of undeclared contest for impenetrability.
|
|
|
Gillian Flynn |
|
1d287ed
|
I worry for a second that she wants to set us up: I am not interested in being set up. I need to be ambushed, caught unawares, like some sort of feral love-jackal. I'm too self-conscious otherwise. I feel myself trying to be charming, and then I realize I'm obviously trying to be charming, and then I try to be even more charming to make up for the fake charm, and then I've basically turned into Liza Minelli: I'm dancing in tights and sequin..
|
|
|
Gillian Flynn |
|
b06d4bd
|
And it's so far beyond fine that you know you can never go back to fine. That fast. You think: Oh, here is the rest of my life. It's finally arrived.
|
|
|
Gillian Flynn |
|
dcbaa76
|
It was a gross, tasteless thing to say - my brain had been burping up such inappropriate thoughts at inopportune moments. Mental gas I couldn't control. Like, I'd started internally singing the lyrics to 'Bony Moronie' whenever I saw my cop friend. She's as skinny as a stick of macaroni, my brain would bebop as Detective Rhonda Boney was telling me about dragging the river for my missing wife. Defense mechanism, I told myself, just a weird ..
|
|
|
Gillian Flynn |
|
bd246dd
|
A lot of people lacked that gift: knowing when to fuck off. People love talking, and I have never been a huge talker. I carry on an inner monologue, but the words often don't reach my lips. She looks nice today, I'd think, but somehow it wouldn't occur to me to say it out loud. My mom talked, my sister talked. I'd been raised to listen. So, sitting on the couch by myself, not talking, felt decadent.
|
|
|
Gillian Flynn |
|
2ad4c01
|
Because isn't that the point of every relationship: to be known by someone else, to be understood? He gets me. She gets me. Isn't that the simple magic phrase? So you suffer through the night with the perfect-on-paper man--the stutter of jokes misunderstood, the witty remarks lobbed and missed. Or maybe he understands that you've made a witty remark but, unsure of what to do with it, he holds it in his hand like some bit of conversational p..
|
|
|
Gillian Flynn |
|
7f69026
|
I have a mistress. Now is the part where I have to tell you I have a mistress and you stop liking me. If you liked me to begin with. I have a pretty, young, very young mistress, and her name is Andie.
|
|
|
Gillian Flynn |
|
86298d1
|
What are you thinking, Amy? The question I've asked most often during our marriage, if not out loud, if not to the person who could answer. 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?
|
|
|
Gillian Flynn |
|
d10747c
|
That's the way plants down here work: The Mexicans get the shittiest, most dangerous jobs, and the whites still complain.
|
|
|
Gillian Flynn |
|
f8531df
|
I DIDN'T STOP giving hand jobs because I wasn't good at it. I stopped giving hand jobs because I was the best at it. For three years, I gave the best hand job in the tristate area. The key is to not overthink it. If you start worrying about technique, if you begin analyzing rhythm and pressure, you lose the essential nature of the act. You have to mentally prepare beforehand, and then you have to stop thinking and trust your body to take ov..
|
|
|
Gillian Flynn |
|
98b5d7b
|
I think of that, too: her mind. Her brain, all those coils, and her thoughts shuttling through those coils like fast, frantic centipedes. Like a child, I picture opening her skull, unspooling her brain and sifting through it, trying to catch and pin down her thoughts. What are you thinking, Amy?
|
|
centipedes
gone-girl
love
over-thinking
relationships
the-mind
the-unknown
thinking-process
thoughts
|
Gillian Flynn |
|
41f09f0
|
People whispered comfort about Marian being called back to heaven, but my mother would not be distracted from her grief. To this day it remains a hobby.
|
|
|
Gillian Flynn |
|
7823971
|
Millions of dollars later, and neither of them were happy. Money is wasted on the rich.
|
|
|
Gillian Flynn |
|
a06566a
|
Sometimes that's what happens. No cigarette burns, no bone snaps. Just an irretrievable slipping.
|
|
|
Gillian Flynn |
|
9a9fb2c
|
inside joke is like a symbol of friendship without having to do the work required of an actual friendship. So
|
|
|
Gillian Flynn |
|
1fed89d
|
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 -
|
|
|
Gillian Flynn |
|
e7862ee
|
It infects you. It ruined me.
|
|
|
Gillian Flynn |