Quotes from Sharp Objects

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

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

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

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

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

“Safer to be feared than loved.”
― Gillian Flynn, quote from Sharp Objects

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.