Sharp Objects

by Gillian Flynn

How do you keep safe when your whole day is as wide and empty as the sky?

The problem started long before that, of course. Problems always start long before you really, really see them.

They always call depression the blues, but I would have been happy to waken to a periwinkle outlook. Depression to me is urine yellow.

It’s impossible to compete with the dead. I wished I could stop trying.

Every tragedy that happens in the world happens to my mother, and this more than anything about her turns my stomach. She worries over people she’s never met who have a spell of bad chance. She cries over news from across the globe. It’s all too much for her, the cruelty of human beings.

A town so suffocating and small, you tripped over people you hated every day. People who knew things about you. It’s the kind of place that leaves a mark.

I’ve always been partial to the image of liquor as lubrication—a layer of protection from all the sharp thoughts in your head.