We're into this barrage of pop culture - you know, TV, movies, the Internet. We become creatures that we've made up, made of certain different flotsam from pop culture and certain different personas that are in style.
I feel like I need to give people a note with the book that says, 'I'm OK, no worries!'
I always loved scary movies, and my dad was a film professor.
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.
There's nothing lovelier than having a newborn and still plotting a dark conspiracy.
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.
I was not always someone who wanted to get married or thought I would get married, so being a true writer, I was always navel-gazing: 'What are good marriages? What are bad marriages?'
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.
My first job had me miscast as a bubbly shopgirl; I was pathologically shy and, thus, tended to replace human speech with excessive head gestures. It was like being waited on by Harpo Marx.
The funny thing, I guess, is that my husband ended up being the muse of a book about the worst marriage in the world, because if he hadn't consistently said, 'Don't censor yourself, don't worry about me' - if he'd been anxious and worried about it - then it would never have gotten written.
I watched 'Psycho' a million times.
It seems like the darker the books are, the nicer the person is. People say it's the romance writers you've got to watch out for.
People focus on the darker female characters in my books, but for every one of those, I can also show you an equally screwed up man that no one ever comments about, or a nicer woman that no one comments about. I don't feel like that's my specialty.
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.'
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.''
The newspaper industry was built on the penny dreadfuls.
Women are just as violently minded as men are, but with men, it's taken for granted.
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?'
Kansas City is truly an awesome town.
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.
