Quote of the Day (Gillian Flynn, on Great Thrillers)

“Old-fashioned suspense is more engaging than immediate violence. A great thriller to me is more about creating a sense of unease, a queasiness that comes with knowing something is not quite right. It’s why I love unreliable narrators — there’s something so wonderfully unnerving about realizing midway through a book that you’ve put yourself in the hands of someone who is not to be trusted.”—Gone Girl novelist Gillian Flynn, on what makes a great thriller, in “By the Book” interview, The New York Times Book Review, May 11, 2014

Quote of the Day (Gillian Flynn, on Her Failed Attempt to Read Great Books)

“Several years back (and by several, I probably mean 12), I decided to read every Pulitzer Prize-winning novel in chronological order. I thought it’d force me to read some books I already should have read (The Grapes of Wrath, 1940 winner) and also read some more obscure novels I never would have picked up otherwise (the truly lovely Early Autumn, by Louis Bromfield, 1927). Alas, I have stalled out on Honey in the Horn, by H. L. Davis (1936). I find it physically impossible to pick up this book, and over the past few years, it has been demoted from the top of my night stand, to the shelf below my night stand, where it gathers dust and resents my neglect. It’s not the book’s fault. I just can’t get past the title — Honey in the Horn? — and its rather ominous meaning: ‘from a line in a square-dancing tune.’ Shiver. Someday the guilt will break me.” —Gone Girl novelist Gillian Flynn, on books she is embarrassed not to have read yet, in a “By the Book” interview, The New York Times Book Review, May 11, 2014