I was not a nice little girl. My favorite summertime hobby was stunning ants and feeding them to spiders.
Gillian Flynn
I have four or five ideas that just keep floating around and I want to kind of just let one - like a beautiful butterfly, let it land somewhere.
I think women do have that fatal streak to them that's partly because it's been romanticized, the martyr complex - 'Look what you did to me!'
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 just think - the Midwest, if you grow up there, you're deathly afraid of putting on airs. Any time a Midwesterner criticizes someone, it's usually involving some form of being too big for your britches.
Women shouldn't be expected to only play nurturing, kind caretakers.
I'm not hyper-opinionated, but when I do have an opinion, I'm very stubborn, and I want to persuade everyone to my point of view.
The number of mystery and horror writers I've met who are just the sanest and the nicest people... it's crazy. Maybe it's because the writing gets something out of the system?
I want books to give me insight into the way people's brains work and hearts work, and that's what engages me.
I like the idea that people who see 'Gone Girl' are possibly going to come out with incredibly different reactions to it - not just between men and women, but if you are in a good relationship or a bad relationship. Everyone is going to bring their own bundle of prejudices and viewpoints and experiences to it.
The first time my mom read my very first book, she was like, 'I'm not gonna belabor this. It's not a big deal. But I have to ask the question: Is everything okay?'
I'm all for whatever transitions the book properly to a movie.
I can't think of anything more crushing than slowly, over time, realizing exactly how wrong you were about someone.
Books and movies are kind of my two great loves. I don't have too many other actual hobbies. That's pretty much it.
I've always been a mystery fan. My very first grown-up book, I distinctly remember going to the library and my mom helping me pick out an Agatha Christie book. I was in fifth grade or something and very proud of being in the adult fiction aisles. I tore through 'The Mysterious Affair at Styles.'
I get really tense during the first draft. Really tense. That's not great for my family, because the first draft usually takes about a year.
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.'
One of my biggest peeves is when the writer hasn't given you enough information to figure everything out. You should be able to go back to the beginning of 'Gone Girl,' after you've already read it and you know everything, and say, 'Check - check - yes, she gave us that information.'
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.
The best crime reporters don't mind charging in - but they also know how to do it as decent human beings.
Because I'm a woman writing about women who do bad things, that's somehow very 'other.' When men write that, it's called a novel. It's just a book.
The skill set that lets you be alone in your pyjamas for two years writing a book is not the same skill set that lets you go on television shows like 'The View' or 'Late Night With Jimmy Fallon.'
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.
I've always read in order to figure out people more, and that includes bad people and good people.
I watched 'Psycho' a million times.
I am a great believer in jobs for teens. They teach important life lessons, build character, and inflict just the right amount of humiliation necessary for future success in the working world.
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.
You have to be pretty selfless to have a child, who doesn't give a lot back to you.
I think women are very ambidextrous. We don't think twice about reading a book or a movie starring guys. But for guys, it's, like, 'Oh my God, that's a woman thing.' So with my son, I very carefully portion out the female heroes and characters to make sure he's getting an equal amount.
One of my rules about writing exercises is you never are allowed to put them in your book because it's just too tempting. You try to shoehorn things that don't belong.
I had been laid off from 'Entertainment Weekly 'right before I started writing 'Gone Girl.'
I've always had a fondness for the Gothic. That's what kind of stories attract me: Why do people do bad things?
I mostly go under the radar, which is fantastic because I would not be a good famous person.
In college, I discovered the Joyce Carol Oates short story 'Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?' which is definitely one of the most incredibly unnerving, frightening short stories ever written.
I'm not much of a procedural person. That's not what I'm interested in.
I think it's a very female trait to want to please men and to want to be considered the Cool Girl. And if you take that to the farthest reach, where you're actually selling yourself out and degrading yourself by doing things you don't actually want to do, only in order for this man to think that you do, that's a very perverse thing.
I was a quirky kid. I think that's the kind way of putting it.
I could not have written a novel if I hadn't been a journalist first, because it taught me that there's no muse that's going to come down and bestow upon you the mood to write. You just have to do it. I'm definitely not precious.
My dad was a film professor, so he would take me to wildly inappropriate movies.
I love Joyce Carol Oates. I love Margaret Atwood, T.C. Boyle. Arthur Phillips is always consistent.
Some of the most disturbing, sick relationships I've witnessed are between long-time friends, and especially mothers and daughters.
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.
You don't normally see incredibly ugly people who've gone missing and it becomes a sensation.
My interest is in turning over a rock and seeing what's underneath. It's a personality trait more than anything; it's what made me want to become a crime reporter, even though I was not suited for it personality-wise.
Being a novelist, you can roam around with a story and indulge yourself.
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.
I do spend - I feel like I spend about my first 20 minutes at any cocktail party convincing people that I'm not going to harm them in some way.
I do love 'The Turn of the Screw' - I just think that one's always so disturbing.
I was very lucky to grow up in a household that really valued storytelling and didn't find it frivolous.
Female violence is a specific brand of ferocity. It's invasive. A girlfight is all teeth and hair, spit and nails - a much more fearsome thing to watch than two dudes clobbering each other.
