Sharp Objects

by Gillian Flynn

“Sometimes I think we should just burn these woods,” he said abruptly. “Seems like nothing good ever happens in them.

I kept mistaking spiderwebs for glimmering strands of hair.

She was like a girl’s very best doll, the kind you don’t play with.

Like a small town don’t come with its own set of problems.”

they spend their days in a soundless rage.

“Everyone has their own version of a memory,”

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.

Every phrase had to be captured on paper or it wasn’t real, it slipped away.

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.

We all know each other’s secrets. And we all use them.”

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.

They all seemed unfinished.

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

That’s how I’d stay, my insides unused. Empty and pristine. I pictured my pelvis split open, to reveal a tidy hollow, like the nest of a vanished animal.

“Sometimes I can’t. But right now, I can. When everyone’s asleep and everything’s quiet, it’s easier.” She reached out, her hand like a butterfly before my face, then dropped it, patted me on the knee, and left.

Everyone has a moment where life goes off the rails.

Every time people said I was pretty, I thought of everything ugly swarming beneath my clothes.

To refuse has so many more consequences than submitting.

Girls I grew up with, who never had the energy to leave. It was a town that bred complacency through cable TV and a convenience store. Those who remained here were still just as segregated as before.

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

Not surprising, considering the sheer amount of traffic a woman’s body experiences. Tampons and speculums. Cocks, fingers, vibrators and more, between the legs, from behind, in the mouth. Men love to put things inside women, don’t they? Cucumbers and bananas and bottles, a string of pearls, a Magic Marker, a fist. Once a guy wanted to wedge a Walkie-Talkie inside of me. I declined.

“Last night. You saved me. That saved me. If you hadn’t stayed with me, I would have done something bad. I know it, Camille.”

Strangling is the very definition of dominance. Slow-motion murder.