Sharp Objects

by Gillian Flynn

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

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 always feel sad for the girl that I was, because it never occurred to me that my mother might comfort me.

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

Living in the swirl of Adora’s bitterness had to make one a bit crooked.

She’d always been one of those girls who wanted what anyone else had, even if she didn’t want it.

“Ah, well, being conflicted means you can live a shallow life without copping to being a shallow person.”

“Camille, do you ever feel like bad things are going to happen, and you can’t stop them? You can’t do anything, you just have to wait?”

See, Curry, Detective Willis felt I was holding back some information and so he sulked off, like all men do when they don’t get their way with women they’ve fooled around with.

“Sweet Camille, a beautiful girl can get away with anything if she plays nice.

Sometimes I think illness sits inside every woman, waiting for the right moment to bloom.

“I guess when you’re young, people expect you to accept things more easily,” I said. “And you’re a guy. Guys don’t have soft feelings.”

I’ve always believed clear-eyed sobriety was for the harder hearted. I had a shot at the