Gone Girl

50 Brutally Honest Quotes From Gillian Flynn About How Much It Sucks To Be A Woman

Being a woman is harder than it looks.
Holly Riordan
July 14, 2016
“Men always say that as the defining compliment, don’t they? She’s a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl.”
— Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl
Tagged: Dating, Relationships, cool girl, Women
“People are dumb. I’ll never get over how dumb people are.”
— Gillian Flynn, The Grownup: A Story by the Author of Gone Girl
Tagged: humanity, stupidity, Life
“I lack formal education. So I'm left with the feeling that I'm smarter than everyone around me but that if I ever got around really smart people—people who went to universities and drank wine and spoke Latin—that they’d be bored as hell by me. It’s a lonely way to go through life.”
— Gillian Flynn, The Grownup: A Story by the Author of Gone Girl
Tagged: Education, Intelligence, College
“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 over. Basically, it’s like a golf swing.”
— Gillian Flynn, The Grownup: A Story by the Author of Gone Girl
Tagged: hand jobs, Sex, prostitution
“Millions of dollars later, and neither of them were happy. Money is wasted on the rich.”
— Gillian Flynn, The Grownup: A Story by the Author of Gone Girl
Tagged: Money, rich, Sadness, Greed
“I would rather be a librarian, but I worry about the job security. Books may be temporary; dicks are forever.”
— Gillian Flynn, The Grownup: A Story by the Author of Gone Girl
Tagged: Books, Sex, Work
“The face you give the world tells the world how to treat you.”
— Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects
Tagged: Personality, Opinions, Life
“Sometimes I think illness sits inside every woman, waiting for the right moment to bloom. I have known so many sick women all my life. Women with chronic pain, with ever-gestating diseases. Women with conditions. Men, sure, they have bone snaps, they have backaches, they have a surgery or two, yank out a tonsil, insert a shiny plastic hip. Women get consumed.”
— Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects
Tagged: Women, Men, sickness
“Sometimes if you let people do things to you, you're really doing it to them.”
— Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects
Tagged: Life, humanity, Communication
“There was nothing I wanted to do more than be unconscious again, wrapped in black, gone away. I was raw. I felt swollen with potential tears, like a water balloon filled to burst. Begging for a pin prick.”
— Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects
Tagged: Tears, Pain, unconscious
“They always call depression the blues, but I would have been happy to waken to a periwinkle outlook. Depression to me is urine yellow, washed out, exhausted miles of weak piss.”
— Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects
Tagged: Depression, Sadness, Suffering
“I've always been partial to the image of liquor as lubrication, a layer of protection from all the sharp thoughts in your head.”
— Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects
Tagged: liquor, Drinking, Protection
“I like checking days off a calendar—151 days crossed and nothing truly horrible has happened. 152 and the world isn’t ruined. 153 and I haven’t destroyed anyone. 154 and no one really hates me. Sometimes I think I won’t ever feel safe until I can count my last days on one hand. Three more days to get through until I don’t have to worry about life anymore.”
— Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects
Tagged: Safety, Death, Dying
“Everyone has their own version of a memory.”
— Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects
Tagged: Memories, Past, differences
“I was not a lovable child, and I'd grown into a deeply unlovable adult. Draw a picture of my soul, and it'd be a scribble with fangs.”
— Gillian Flynn, Dark Places
Tagged: Child, adult, meanness
“I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ. Slit me at my belly and it might slide out, meaty and dark, drop on the floor so you could stomp on it.”
— Gillian Flynn, Dark Places
Tagged: meanness, Evil, Personality
“The truly frightening flaw in humanity is our capacity for cruelty - we all have it.”
— Gillian Flynn, Dark Places
Tagged: Flaws, humanity, Evil, Cruelty
“It was surprising that you could spend hours in the middle of the night pretending things were okay, and know in thirty seconds of daylight that simply wasn't so.”
— Gillian Flynn, Dark Places
Tagged: Night, Morning, pretending, Feelings
“I am not angry or sad or happy to see you. I could not give a shit. You don't even ripple.”
— Gillian Flynn, Dark Places
Tagged: angry, Sad, Happy, Feelings, emotions
“I am, I guess, depressed. I guess I've been depressed for about twenty-four years. I can feel a better version of me somewhere in there - hidden behind a liver or attached to a bit of spleen within my stunted, childish body - a Libby that's telling me to get up, do something, grow up, move on.”
— Gillian Flynn, Dark Places
Tagged: depressed, Depression, Growing Up
“Don't be discouraged - every relationship you have is a failure, until you find the right one.”
— Gillian Flynn, Dark Places
Tagged: Relationships, Failure, Breakups
“There are few phrases that annoy me more than 'I won't bite.' The only line that pisses me off faster is when some drunk, ham-faced dude in a bar sees me trying to get past him and barks: 'Smile, it can't be that bad!' Yeah, actually, it can, jackwad.”
— Gillian Flynn, Dark Places
Tagged: Men, Women, Drunk, smiling
“I should just listen to my gut and then do the opposite.”
— Gillian Flynn, Dark Places
Tagged: Gut, Decisions, Choices
“You think you know the answer, you’re going to find peace? Like knowing is somehow going to fix you? You think after what happened there’s any peace for you, sweetheart? How about this. Instead of asking yourself what happened, just accept that it happened.”
— Gillian Flynn, Dark Places
Tagged: Past, Acceptance, Peace
“I'm not someone who can be depended one five days a week. Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday? I don't even get out of bed five days in a row. I often don't remember to eat five days in a row. Reporting to a workplace, where I should need to stay for eight hours, eight big hours outside my home, was unfeasible.”
— Gillian Flynn, Dark Places
Tagged: Work, Career, social life
“Worries find you easily enough without inviting them.”
— Gillian Flynn, Dark Places
Tagged: worries, Stress, Anxiety
“It seemed like a joke, how much all of these dudes looked alike, like living was so hard it just erased your features, rubbed out anything distinctive.”
— Gillian Flynn, Dark Places
Tagged: similarities, looks, appearances
“Tampon commercial, detergent commercial, maxi pad commercial, windex commercial - you'd think all women do is clean and bleed.”
— Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl
Tagged: Women, Blood, cleaning, tampons
“He’s doing what you tell him to do because he doesn’t care enough to argue, I think. Your petty demands simply make him feel superior, or resentful, and someday he will fuck his pretty, young coworker who asks nothing of him, and you will actually be shocked.”
— Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl
Tagged: arguments, Cheating, resentment
“So I know I am right not to settle, but it doesn’t make me feel better as my friends pair off and I stay home on Friday night with a bottle of wine and make myself an extravagant meal and tell myself, This is perfect, as if I’m the one dating me.”
— Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl
Tagged: settle, Dating, Relationships, Single