Sharp Objects Quotes

“I was already tired of talking, and I’d said very little.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“Most sows are repeatedly inseminated, brood after brood, till their bodies give way and they go to slaughter. But while they’re still useful, they’re made to nurse—strapped to their sides in a farrowing crate, legs apart, nipples exposed. Pigs are extremely smart, sociable creatures, and this forced assembly-line intimacy makes the nursing sows want to die. Which, as soon as they dry up, they do. Even the idea of this practice I find repulsive. But the sight of it actually does something to you, makes you less human. Like watching a rape and saying nothing.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“When we got home, she’d trail off to her room like an unfinished sentence, and I would sit outside with my face pressed against her door and replay the day in my head, searching for clues to what I’d done to displease her.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“The Victorians, especially southern Victorians, needed a lot of room to stray away from each other, to duck tuberculosis and flu, to avoid rapacious lust, to wall themselves away from sticky emotion. Extra space is always good.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“She has never told me she loved me, and I never assumed she did.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“It infects you. It ruined me.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“Camille, if you could be any fairy-tale person in the world, who would you be?” Amma asked. “Sleeping Beauty.” To spend a life in dreams, that sounded too lovely. “I’d be Persephone.” “I don’t know who that is,” I said. Gayla slapped some collards on my plate, and fresh corn. I made myself eat, a kernel at a time, my gag reflex churning with each chew. “She’s the Queen of the Dead,” Amma beamed. “She was so beautiful, Hades stole her and took her to the underworld to be his wife. But her mother was so fierce, she forced Hades to give Persephone back. But only for six months each year. So she spends half her life with the dead, and half with the living.” “Amma, why would such a creature appeal to you?” Alan said. “You can be so ghastly.” “I feel sorry for Persephone because even when she’s back with the living, people are afraid of her because of where’s she’s been,” Amma said. “And even when she’s with her mother, she’s not really happy, because she knows she’ll have to go back underground.” She grinned at Adora and jabbed a big bite of ham into her mouth, then crowed.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“My sense of weightlessness, I think, comes from the fact that I know so little about my past..”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“I drank the rest of the sours and had dark sticky dreams. My mother had cut me open and was unpacking my organs, stacking them in a row on my bed as my flesh flapped to either side. She was sewing her initials into each of them, then tossing them back into me, along with a passel of forgotten objects:”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“I have one memory that catches in me like a nasty clump of blood. Marian was dead about two years, and my mother had a cluster of friends over for afternoon drinks. One of them brought a baby. For hours, the child was cooed over, smothered with red-lipstick kisses, tidied up with tissues, then lipstick smacked again. I was supposed to be reading in my room, but I sat at the top of the stairs watching.

My mother finally was handed the baby, and she cuddled it ferociously. Oh, how wonderful it is to hold a baby again! Adora jiggled it on her knee, walked it around the rooms, whispered to it, and I looked down from above like a spiteful little god, the back of my hand placed against my face, imagining how it felt to be cheek to cheek with my mother.

When the ladies went into the kitchen to help tidy up the dishes, something changed. I remember my mother, alone in the living room, staring at the baby almost lasciviously. She pressed her lips hard against the baby's apple slice of a cheek. Then she opened her mouth just slightly, took a tiny bit of flesh between her teeth, and gave it a little bite.

The baby wailed. The blotch faded as Adora snuggled the child, and told the other women it was just being fussy. I ran to Marian's room and got under the covers.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“They were women not strong enough or smart enough to leave. Women without imagination. So they stayed in Wind Gap and played their teenage lives on an endless loop.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“People whispered comfort about Marian being called back to heaven, but my mother would not be distracted from her grief. To this day it remains a hobby.”
― 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. I don't usually feel that I am.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“I always feel sad for the girl that I was,”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“I blame my mother. A child weaned on poison considers harm a comfort.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“I couldn't decide if I'd been mistreated. By Richard, by those boys who took my virginity, by anyone. I was never really on my side in any argument.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“I would never steer a fellow sufferer from the relief of a blackout.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“Ninety degrees but the heat made me feel safe, like walking under water.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“My demons aren't remotely tackled, they're just mildly concussed.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“Winter. No one likes winter.” “It gets dark early, I like that.” “Why?” Because that means the day has ended. 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.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“Sometimes I think illness sits inside every woman, waiting for the right moment to bloom. I have known so many sick women all my life. Women with chronic pain, with ever-gestating diseases. Women with conditions. Men, sure, they have bone snaps, they have backaches, they have a surgery or two, yank out a tonsil, insert a shiny plastic hip. Women get consumed. 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?”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“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

“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. I don’t usually feel that I am. I feel like a warm gust of wind could exhale my way and I’d be disappeared forever, not even a sliver of fingernail left behind. On some days, I find this thought calming; on others it chills me.”
― 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.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“Every phrase had to be captured on paper or it wasn't real, it slipped away. I'd see the words hanging in midair--Camille, pass the milk-- and anxiety coiled up in me as they began to fade, like jet exhaust. Writing them down, though, I had them. No worries that they'd become extinct. I was a lingual conservationist. I was the class freak, a tight, nervous eighth-grader frenziedly copying down phrases ("Mr. Feeney is totally gay," "Jamie Dobson is ugly," "They never have chocolate milk") with a keenness bordering on the religious.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“He needed no foreplay for the interview, and I was grateful. It's like sweet-talking your date when you both know you're about to get laid.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“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?”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“I could feel my limbs disconnecting, floating nearby like driftwood on an oily lake.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“Normally, Richard was the kind of guy I disliked, someone born and raised plush: looks, charm, smarts, probably money. These men were never very interesting to me; they had no edges, and they were usually cowards. They instinctively fled any situation that might cause them embarrassment or awkwardness. But Richard didn’t bore me. Maybe because his grin was a little crooked. Or because he made his living dealing in ugly things.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“Sometimes that’s what happens. No cigarette burns, no bone snaps. Just an irretrievable slipping.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects