Gillian Flynn: Likeness

“Give me a man with a little fight in him, a man who calls me on my bullshit. (But who also kind of likes my bullshit.)”

“She’s easy to like. I’ve never understood why that’s considered a compliment - that just anyone could like you.”

“Because you can't be as in love as we were and not have it invade your bone marrow. Our kind of love can go into remission, but it's always waiting to return. Like the world's sweetest cancer.”

“Can you imagine, finally showing your true self to your spouse, your soul mate, and having him not like you? So that's how the hating first began. I've thought about this a lot, and that's where it started, I think.”

“I ached once, hard, like a period typed at the end of a sentence.”

“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.”

“It had gotten to the point where it seemed like nothing matters, because I’m not a real person and neither is anyone else.”

“Like walking through a door. Our relationship immediately attained a sepia tone: the past.”

“Sometimes he felt like he'd been gone his whole life--in exile, away from the place he was supposed to be, and that, soldier-like, he was pining to be returned. Homesick for a place he'd never been.”

“He has that look, like I am being unreasonable, like he is so sure I am being unreasonable that I wonder if I am.”

“Sleep is like a cat: It only comes to you if you ignore it. I drank more and continued my mantra. 'Stop thinking', swig, 'empty your head', swig, 'now, seriously empty your head'.”

“It was silly but incredibly sweet, these people spending so much energy trying to figure me out. The answer: I don't like cherries.”

“Sometimes I feel like Nick has decided on a version of me that doesn't exist.”

“It’s good.’ She chirps the last bit as if that were all to say about a book: It’s good or it’s bad. I liked it or I didn’t. No discussions of the writing, the themes, the nuances, the structure. Just good or bad. Like a hot dog.”

“She'll never really let me go. She likes the game too much."
"Then stop playing it.”

“The actual stuff my family owned, those boxes under my stairs, I can't quite bear to look at. I like other people's things better. They come with other people's history.”

“but fact is, it’s been years since I even really liked
someone. So how likely is it I’ll meet someone I love, much less someone I love enough to marry? I’m tired of not knowing who I’ll be with, or if I’ll be
with anyone.”

“So are there any asshole guys here I can start dating?' she says. 'That's, like, my pattern.”

“I was never really on my side in any argument. I liked the Old Testament spitefulness of the phraseSometimes women do.”