Dark Places

by Gillian Flynn

I was not a lovable child, and I’d grown into a deeply unlovable adult. Draw a picture of my soul, and it’d be a scribble with fangs.

I can feel a better version of me somewhere in there—hidden behind a liver or attached to a bit of spleen within my stunted, childish body—a Libby that’s telling me to get up, do something, grow up, move on.

I assumed everything bad in the world could happen, because everything bad in the world already did happen.

Worries find you easily enough without inviting them. With Diane, worries were almost physical beings, leechy creatures with latchhooks for fingers, meant to be vanquished immediately. Diane didn’t worry, that was for less hearty women.

If ifs and buts were candies and nuts we’d all have a very Merry Christmas,

It was surprising that you could spend hours in the middle of the night pretending things were OK, and know in thirty seconds of daylight that that simply wasn’t so.

It is always consoling to think of suicide; it’s what gets one through many a bad night.

Whenever I see news stories about children who were killed by their parents, I think: But how could it be? They cared enough to give this kid a name, they had a moment—at least one moment—when they sifted through all the possibilities and picked one specific name for their child, decided what they would call their baby. How could you kill something you cared enough to name?

“Don’t be discouraged—every relationship you have is a failure, until you find the right one.”

Sometimes he felt like he’d been gone his whole life—in exile, away from the place he was supposed to be, and that, soldier-like, he was pining to be returned. Homesick for a place he’d never been.