Sharp Objects Quotes

“The face you give the world tells the world how to treat you.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

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

“Sometimes if you let people do things to you, you're really doing it to them.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“I just think some women aren't made to be mothers. And some women aren't made to be daughters.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“Problems always start long before you really, really see them.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“Safer to be feared than loved.”
― 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

“I ached once, hard, like a period typed at the end of a sentence.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“Every time people said I was pretty, I thought of everything ugly swarming beneath my clothes.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

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

“To spend a life in dreams, that sounded too lovely.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“There was nothing I wanted to do more than be unconscious again, wrapped in black, gone away. I was raw. I felt swollen with potential tears, like a water balloon filled to burst. Begging for a pin prick.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“I've always been partial to the image of liquor as lubrication, a layer of protection from all the sharp thoughts in your head.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“This is the unforgiving light of the morning, time to drop the illusion.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“Sometimes it is all too loud.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“I am a cutter, you see. Also a snipper, a slicer, a carver, a jabber. I am a very special case. I have a purpose. My skin, you see, screams. It's covered with words - cook, cupcake, kitty, curls - as if a knife-wielding first-grader learned to write on my flesh. I sometimes, but only sometimes, laugh. Getting out of the bath and seeing, out of the corner of my eye, down the side of a leg: babydoll. Pull on a sweater and, in a flash of my wrist: harmful. Why these words? Thousands of hours of therapy have yielded a few ideas from the good doctors. They are often feminine, in a Dick and Jane, pink vs. puppy dog tails sort of way. Or they're flat-out negative. Number of synonyms for anxious carved in my skin: eleven. The one thing I know for sure is that at the time, it was crucial to see these letters on me, and not just see them, but feel them. Burning on my left hip: petticoat.

And near it, my first word, slashed on an anxious summer day at age thirteen: wicked. I woke up that morning, hot and bored, worried about the hours ahead. How do you keep safe when your whole day is as wide and empty as the sky? Anything could happen. I remember feeling that word, heavy and slightly sticky across my pubic bone. My mother's steak knife. Cutting like a child along red imaginary lines. Cleaning myself. Digging in deeper. Cleaning myself. Pouring bleach over the knife and sneaking through the kitchen to return it. Wicked. Relief. The rest of the day, I spent ministering to my wound. Dig into the curves of W with an alcohol-soaked Q-tip. Pet my cheek until the sting went away. Lotion. Bandage. Repeat.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“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.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“Sometimes I think I won't ever feel safe until I can count my last days on one hand.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“People got such a charge from seeing their names in print. Proof of existence. I could picture a squabble of ghosts ripping through piles of newspapers. Pointing at a name on the page. See, there I am. I told you I lived. I told you I was.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“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.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“Daydreams can be dangerous.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“To refuse has so many more consequences than submitting.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“See, there I am. I told you I lived. I told you I was.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“How do you keep safe when your whole day is as wide and empty as the sky?”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“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

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

“Ah, well, being conflicted means you can live a shallow life without copping to be a shallow person.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“Sometimes if you let people do things to you, you’re really doing it to them,” Amma said, pulling another Blow Pop from her pocket. Cherry. “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