Sharp Objects

by Gillian Flynn

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. Washed out, exhausted miles of weak piss.

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.

She has never told me she loved me, and I never assumed she did.

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

Sometimes I think I won’t ever feel safe until I can count my last days on one hand. Three more days to get through until I don’t have to worry about life anymore.

being conflicted means you can live a shallow life without copping to being a shallow person.”

“I think I finally realized why I don’t love you,” she said.

“Like: This place is miserable and I want to die, but I can’t think of any place I’d rather be,”

“What if you hurt because it feels so good? Like you have a tingling, like someone left a switch on in your body. And nothing can turn the switch off except hurting? What does that mean?”

Sometimes when you let people do things to you, you’re really doing it to them.