Sharp Objects Quotes

“That’s the way plants down here work: The Mexicans get the shittiest, most dangerous jobs, and the whites still complain.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“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.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“It’s impossible to compete with the dead. I wished I could stop trying.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“Was I good at caring for Amma because of kindness? Or did I like caring for Amma because I have Adora's sickness? I waver between the two, especially at night, when my skin begins to pulse.

Lately I've been leaning toward kindness.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“I could feel the night hanging on me like a soft, damp bedgown”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“I wanted to slice barren into my skin. 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.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“You know how people sometimes say they have to hurt because if they don’t, they’re so numb they won’t feel anything?”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“My mother said she was the most popular girl in school, and I believed it. Jackie said she was the meanest, and I believed that, too.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“Frankly, I think Adora prefers us to feel like strangers. She wants all relationships in the house to run through her.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“Everyone has a moment where life goes off the rails. Mine was the day Marian died. The day I picked up that knife is a tight second.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“I finally understood—nearly twenty years too late.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“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.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“She has that voraciousness about children. She swoops in on them. Even I, in public was a beloved child. She'd parade me into town, smiling and teasing me, tickling me as she spoke with people on the sidewalks. 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 had done to displease her.

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 come over for afternoon drinks. For hours, the child was cooed over, smothered with red lipstick kisses, tidied up with tissues, then lipstick smacked again. I was suppose 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.”
― 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. 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

“Sometimes my scars have a mind of their own.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“I thought being home might do you good, but … I forget sometimes parents aren’t always … good for their kids.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“Lately, I've been leaning towards kindness.

- Camille Preaker”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“At one point, she probably liked the idea of a daughter. When she was a girl, I bet she daydreamed of being a mother, of coddling, of licking her child like a milk-swelled cat. She has that voraciousness about children. She swoops in on them. Even I, in public, was a beloved child.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“The problem started long before that, of course. Problems always start long before you really, really see them.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“Frank Curry thinks I’m a soft touch. Might be because I’m a woman. Might be because I’m a soft touch.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“Get all that bad stuff out, sweetheart. Don’t stop till it’s all out.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“Today I like my first ladies with a little bite.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“Bear gifts if you can’t bear anything else.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“Please let him look. I didn't need to hide from someone courting oblivion as ardently as I am.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“His fingers tugged at the towel. I held tight to it, hard as a dishrag on my breasts, and shook my head.
"What's this?" he whispered into my ear.
"This is the unforgiving light of morning," I whispered back. "Time to drop the illusion."
"What illusion?"
"That anything can be okay," I said, and kissed his cheek.”
― 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.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“I’ve always believed clear-eyed sobriety was for the harder hearted.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“It sounded artificial, like a beauty contestant pledging world peace.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“The quotes were good, if overpolished. I find this common, and in direct proportion to the amount of TV a subject watches. Not long ago, I interviewed a woman whose twenty-two-year-old daughter had just been murdered by her boyfriend, and she gave me a line straight from a legal drama I happened to catch the night before: I'd like to say that I pity him, but now I fear I'll never be able to pity again.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“Adora changed her color scheme from peach to yellow. She promised me she'd take me to the fabric store so I can make new coverings to match. This dollhouse is my fancy." She almost made it sound natural, my fancy. The words floated out of her mouth sweet and round like butterscotch, murmured with just a tilt of her head, but the phrase was definitely my mother's. Her little doll, learning to speak just like Adora.
"Looks like you do a very good job with it," I said, and motioned a weak wave good-bye.
"Thank you," she said. Her eyes focused on my room in the dollhouse. A small finger poked the bed. "I hope you enjoy your stay here," she murmured into the room, as if she were addressing a tiny Camille no one could see.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects