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Quote by Gillian Flynn

“It’s a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless automat of characters. And if all of us are play-acting, there can be no such thing as a soul mate, because we don’t have genuine souls.”

Quote by Gillian Flynn

Work

Gone Girl

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Author

Gillian Flynn
Gillian Flynn

Gillian Flynn is an American author known for her suspense novels. Her works are characterized by complex characters and tense plots, with her most famous novel being 'Gone Girl'. more

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“Being a real person oneself is a matter of setting up limits and drawing lines and saying no. I don't want to be a nebulous bit of ectoplasm straying around in other people's lives. That sort of vague sympathy with everybody precludes any real understanding of anybody." "The sympathy needn't be vague--"And it precludes any real loyalty to anybody." "One must know the details, justice, after all--" "I detest chatter and gossip. One must hold one's tongue. Even sometimes just not think about people. Real thoughts come out of silence.”

“...the attitude of Gorky and his paper. He had returned to Russia early in 1914, taken a pacifist line on the the outbreak of war, but had pursued it with a restraint which protected him from most of the obloquy poured on others of similar views After the February Revolution of 1917 he had regarded the Bolsheviks as merely one among a number of progressive parties, and it was not unexpected that in October he should warn about the future. Now, he not only printed the Zinoviev-Kamenev statement but also a leading article in which he said: 'Ever more persistent rumors are spreading to the effect that on 2 November a Bolshevik rising will take place; in other words, that the hideous scenes of 16 to 18 July may be repeated. That means that once more there will appear motor lorries overfilled with men with rifles and revolvers in their trembling hands, and these rifles will shoot at shop windows, at people, at random. They will shoot only because the men armed with them will try to kill their fear. All dark instincts of the crowd irritated by disorder, by the falsehood and filth of politics, will flare up and ooze forth poisonous malice, hatred, vengeance. People will be killing one another, in their inability to destroy their own bestial stupidity. The unorganized crowd will creep out into the streets, hardly understanding what it wants, while under its cover, adventurers, thieves, [and] professional assassins will set out to "create the history of the Russian revolution". In brief, there will be repeated that bloody, senseless slaughter, which we have already witnessed, and which has undermined through our whole land the moral importance of the revolution, and has shaken its cultural meaning.”

“Neither the Russians nor the Americans were the cleverest people, or the most experienced, in the world that followed 1945. The French were rather more civilized, the British more knowledgeable, and even the Italians at times more practical. But if you have the ships, the guns, and the money, too, cleverness or experience is not really necessary. Even a reasonable amount of blundering can be survived.”