Quotes from book

Sharp Objects

“A child weaned on poison considers harm a comfort.”

“The face you give the world tells the world how to treat you.”

“Sometimes if you let people do things to you, you're really doing it to them.”

“I was never really on my side in any argument. I liked the Old Testament spitefulness of the phraseSometimes women do.”

“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, I find offensive.”

“Sometimes I think I won't ever feel safe until I can count my last days on one hand.”

“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.”

“Sometimes I think illness sits inside every woman, waiting for the right moment to bloom.”

“I'm tired of dying.”

“I've always believed clear-eyed sobriety was for the harder hearted.”

“Problems always start long before you really, really see them.”

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

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

“See, there I am. I told you I lived. I told you I was.”

“I just think some women aren't made to be mothers. And some women aren't made to be daughters.”

“I ached once, hard, like a period typed at the end of a sentence.”

“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.”

“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.”

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