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 read all kinds of novels, as long as they're good.

I like westerns, fantasy, sci-fi, graphic novels, thrillers, and I try to avoid the word 'genre' altogether. A good book is a good book.

A really great popcorn movie is extremely hard to pull off. A really great popcorn book is equally hard to pull off, so I don't feel guilty devouring one.

A great thriller, to me, is more about creating a sense of unease: a queasiness that comes with knowing something is not quite right.

Women shouldn't be expected to only play nurturing, kind caretakers.

That's always been part of my goal - to show the dark side of women. Men write about bad men all the time, and they're called antiheroes.

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.

I'm not much of a procedural person. That's not what I'm interested in.

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 love video games.

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 liked the idea of a whodunit revolving around a marriage.

I grew up in a house full of books.

I find, the older I get, the more surprised I am about how hesitant people are to say what they really want, what they really dream about, what really drives them. It's as if sometimes we're sort of embarrassed, as we get older, to be transparent about that. But you save so much time if you're transparent about what you want.

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.

I love a good worst-case scenario. My brain just kind of works that way. I like that idea of how much a person can get away with, and why.

I always loved ghost stories and haunted house stories, whether they were done in a fantasy way or done in a realistic way.

Even good characters have their dark sides, and I think it is important that women aren't seen as innately good.

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.

I'm probably a guy's girl, although I hate that phrase. I tend to have more close male friends than I do female friends, and I always have. I would say that of my 10 close friends, seven are men.

I am not someone who has hobbies. I have tried knitting, and I can't figure it out.

The best crime reporters don't mind charging in - but they also know how to do it as decent human beings.

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.'

For me, suspense is always harder and better than going for the quick, outright scare.

I've never been interested in watching or reading anything because it's the hero's story. I don't feel the need to be inspired by the character or learn a lesson. I feel the need to be engaged by them.

I've wondered if 'Harry Potter' would have been as big if it was 'Harriet Potter.' Now that I've written a screenplay - and raising a son in particular - I'm looking at story content and realizing how limited women are onscreen.

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.

I love Robin Wright's character in 'House of Cards' because she's a bona fide villain. She's a not-nice person in a believable way; you can see her working in the world.

What I tell myself is that there is never going to be another 'Gone Girl' for me. I mean, I really believe that. I think I'll write other good books; I have faith in that.

There are so many good books, I don't want to only read within one particular type.

I love Joyce Carol Oates. I love Margaret Atwood, T.C. Boyle. Arthur Phillips is always consistent.

I think that women really entwine with the people that they become close to in a way that men don't - and so, when they are forced to disentwine, you can't remove the vines without doing some damage.

You have to be pretty selfless to have a child, who doesn't give a lot back to you.

I have two kids, and anyone who has a kid in order to feel loved is going to be in trouble because kids are first and foremost all about themselves. They'll say they love you, but 10 seconds later they'll turn on you.

There's a book by Anne Rivers Siddons called 'The House Next Door' that I just think is one of the all-time great haunted-house stories. I think that's one of the all-time greatest.

I think everyone self-mythologizes.

I've always read in order to figure out people more, and that includes bad people and good people.

I want books to give me insight into the way people's brains work and hearts work, and that's what engages me.

The midwest is great because it hasn't been entirely claimed. There's more room to write about it; it's harder to write about New York, because even if you've never been there, you think you know what it's like. To do it in any sort of fresh way is trickier.

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.

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.

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.

I love the way the Victorians found a way to put faces in everything: you know, furniture and marble and, you know, everywhere you turn around - the banister, you know, there's someone looking at you.

Being a novelist, you can roam around with a story and indulge yourself.

Ever since I was a child, I've been a huge comic and graphic novel fan, but I've never tried writing one before.

I would love to do a full-scale graphic novel.

I mostly go under the radar, which is fantastic because I would not be a good famous person.

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.'