Gillian Flynn

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

“I find, the older I get, the more surprised I am about how hesitant people are to say what they really want, what they really dream about, what really drives them. It's as if sometimes we're sort of embarrassed, as we get older, to be transparent about that. But you save so much time if you're transparent about what you want.”

“My favorite game was one I invented with my cousins called Mean Aunt Rosie, where I was a deranged maiden aunt who chased them around the house.”

“There's a difference between really loving someone and loving the idea of her.”

“You're sexist. I'm so sick of liberal lefty men practicing sexual discrimination under the guise of protecting women against sexual discrimination.”

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

“There's nothing that can drive me from zero to crazy faster than a man who comes up to me and says, 'You know, I don't normally read books by women, but I really liked 'Gone Girl.''”

“Very quickly, I discovered I did not have what it takes to be a good crime reporter: I was too unassertive and a little bit wimpy. It was very clear that was not what I was going to do, but I loved journalism, and I'm the daughter of a film professor, and my mom taught reading.”

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

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

“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.”

“My dad had limitations. That's what my good-hearted mom always told us. He had limitations, but he meant no harm. It was kind of her to say, but he did do harm.”

“A theme that has always interested me is how women express anger, how women express violence. That is very much part of who women are, and it's so unaddressed. A vast amount of literature deals with cycles of violence about men, antiheroes. Women lack that vocabulary.”

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

“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 was very interested in what happens to the husband when his wife goes missing, and how quickly they can be turned into heroes and villains.”

“Libraries are filled with stories on generations of brutal men, trapped in a cycle of aggression. I wanted to write about the violence of women.”

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

“No one watches 'Taxi Driver' and says, 'Oh, it's a male-oriented film.' No one looks at nine-tenths of the films out there that are headlined by men and say, 'It's a male-oriented film.'”

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