Sharp Objects Quotes

“Sometimes I think illness sits inside every woman, waiting for the right moment to bloom.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“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?”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“And sometimes drunk women aren't raped; they just make stupid choices--and to say we deserve special treatment when we're drunk because we're women, to say we need to be looked after, I find offensive.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“I'm tired of dying.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“Camille?" Her voice quiet and girlish and unsure. "You know how people sometimes say they have to hurt because if they don't, they're so numb they won't feel anything?"
"Mmm."
"What if it's the opposite?" Amma whispered. "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 that switch off except hurting? What does that mean?"
I pretended to be asleep. I pretended not to feel her fingers tracing vanish over and over on the back of my neck.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“Everyone has their own version of a memory,”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“When a child knows that young that her mother doesn't care for her, bad things happen.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“How confusing to live in the shadow of a shadow.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“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. She tended to me. She administrated me.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“It sounded artificial, like a beauty pageant contestant pledging world peace. I did feel sad, but articulating it seemed cheap to me.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“I was never really on my side in any argument. I liked the Old Testament spitefulness of the phrase got what she deserved. Sometimes women do.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“I like checking days off a calendar—151 days crossed and nothing truly horrible has happened. 152 and the world isn’t ruined. 153 and I haven’t destroyed anyone. 154 and no one really hates me. 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.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“She’d always been one of those girls who wanted what anyone else had, even if she didn’t want it.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“My body was heading into a flare. I paced a bit, tried to remember how to breathe right, how to calm my skin. But it blared at me. Sometimes my scars have a mind of their own.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“You're sexist. I'm so sick of liberal lefty men practicing sexual discrimination under the guise of protecting women against sexual discrimination.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“Depression to me is urine yellow. Washed out, exhausted miles of weak piss.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“It was that summer, too, that I began the cutting, and was almost as devoted to it as to my newfound loveliness. I adored tending to myself, wiping a shallow red pool of my blood away with a damp washcloth to magically reveal, just above my naval: queasy. Applying alcohol with dabs of a cotton ball, wispy shreds sticking to the bloody lines of: perky. I had a dirty streak my senior year, which I later rectified. A few quick cuts and cunt becomes can't, cock turns into back, clit transforms to a very unlikely cat, the l and i turned into a teetering capital A.

The last words I ever carved into myself, sixteen years after I started: vanish.

Sometimes I can hear the words squabbling at each other across my body. Up on my shoulder, panty calling down to cherry on the inside of my right ankle. On the underside of a big toe, sew uttering muffled threats to baby, just under my left breast. I can quiet them down by thinking of vanish, always hushed and regal, lording over the other words from the safety of the nape of my neck.

Also: At the center of my back, which was too difficult to reach, is a circle of perfect skin the size of a fist.

Over the years I've made my own private jokes. You can really read me. Do you want me to spell it out for you? I've certainly given myself a life sentence. Funny, right? I can't stand to look myself without being completely covered. Someday I may visit a surgeon, see what can be done to smooth me, but now I couldn't bear the reaction. Instead I drink so I don't think too much about what I've done to my body and so I don't do any more. Yet most of the time that I'm awake, I want to cut. Not small words either. Equivocate. Inarticulate. Duplicitous. At my hospital back in Illinois they would not approve of this craving.

For those who need a name, there's a gift basket of medical terms. All I know is that the cutting made me feel safe. It was proof. Thoughts and words, captured where I could see them and track them. The truth, stinging, on my skin, in a freakish shorthand. Tell me you're going to the doctor, and I'll want to cut worrisome on my arm. Say you've fallen in love and I buzz the outlines of tragic over my breast. I hadn't necessarily wanted to be cured. But I was out of places to write, slicing myself between my toes - bad, cry - like a junkie looking for one last vein. Vanish did it for me. I'd saved the neck, such a nice prime spot, for one final good cutting. Then I turned myself in.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“Natalie was buried in the family plot, next to a gravestone that already bore her parents' names. I know the wisdom, that no parents should see their child die, that such an event is like nature spun backward. But it's the only way to truly keep your child. Kid grow up, they forge more potent allegiances. They find a spouse or a lover. They will not be buried with you. The Keenes, however, will remain the purest form of family. Underground.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“Every tragedy that happens in the world happens to my mother,”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“Children digest terror differently. The boy saw a horror, and that horror became the wicked witch of fairy tales, the cruel snow queen.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“I regretted what a serious teenager I'd been: There were no posters of pop stars or favorite movies, no girlish collection of photos or corsages. Instead there were paintings of sailboats, proper pastel pastorals, a portrait of Eleanor Roosevelt. The latter was particularly strange, since I'd known little about Mrs. Roosevelt, except that she was good, which at the time I suppose was enough. Given my druthers now, I'd prefer a snapshot of Warren Harding's wife, "the Duchess," who recorded the smallest offenses in a little red notebook and avenged herself accordingly. Today I like my first ladies with a little bite.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“It’s all too much for her, the cruelty of human beings.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“I’m here, I said, and it felt shockingly comforting, those words. When I’m panicked, I say them aloud to myself. I’m here.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“Thirteen years old, I thought to myself, but I felt a spear of admiration for the girl. When I’d been sad, I hurt myself. Amma hurt other people. When I’d wanted attention, I’d submitted myself to boys: Do what you want; just like me. Amma’s sexual offerings seemed a form of aggression. Long skinny legs and slim wrists and high, babied voice, all aimed like a gun. Do what I want; I might like you.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“- You're so hateful.
- I learned at your feet.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“Everyone has a moment where life goes off the rails.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“Sometimes if you let people do things to you, you’re really doing it to them. Know what I mean? If someone wants to do fucked-up things to you, and you let them, you’re making them more fucked up. Then you have the control. As long as you don’t go crazy.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“Isn’t a smile a girl’s best weapon?”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“Your health is not a debt you just cancel. The body collects, Camille.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“my mother would not be distracted from her grief. To this day it remains a hobby.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects