DARK PLACES - GILLIAN FLYNN

Dark Places -Pg 331

   I knew that's what I needed to do, but my brain was infected with memories of what happened after my family was murdered: the long, washed-out hours going over and over my story with the police, my legs hanging off oversized chairs, cold hot chocolate in styrofoam cups, me unable to get warm, just wanting to go to sleep, that total exhaustion, where even your face is numb. And you can say all you want, it doesn't matter because everyone's dead anyway. 

Dark Places -Pg 315

   She fed me a salty pot roast that I tried to swallow and a lot of pink wine from a box that seemed to have no bottom. We didn't sip, we drank. My kind of women. 

Dark Places -Pg 314

I couldn't think what to say. I just felt a relief. The Days weren't quite dying out yet. They were in fact flourishing, with this pretty, tall girl who looked like me but with all her fingers and toes without my nightmare brain. I wanted to ask a flood of nosy questions: Did she have weak eyes, like Michelle? Was she allergic to strawberries like my mom? Did she have sweet blood, like Debby, get eaten alive by mosquitos, spend the summer stinking of Campho-Phenique? Did she have a temper, like me, a distance like Ben? Was she manipulative and guiltless like Runner? What was she like, what was she like, tell me the many ways she was like the Days, and remind me of how we were.

Dark Places -Pg 299

   They should have stopped early on with the drugs. It was cheap stuff, he could tell by how much it all hurt, even the weed went down fighting, like it was out to damage. It was the cheap stuff that made people mean. 

Dark Places -Pg 298

 He flicked his lighter to one side, and WHOOMP! the clothes fired up, making Trey stumble back two big steps, almost fall. It was the first time Ben had seen him look foolish. Diondra turned away, not wanting to embarrass Trey by seeing it. That made Ben more sad than anything else tonight: the woman he wanted to be his wife, the woman who'd have his child, she'd give this bit of grace to another man, but never, ever to Ben.

Dark Places -Pg 285

   If I were a better person, I'd have put my hand on Lyle's then, given him a warm squeeze, let him know I understood, I empathized. But I wasn't, the thanks was hard enough. 

Dark Places -Pg 278

 His eyes still had the druggy glow, and Ben wished he'd taken more of the Devil's rush, wished he wasn't jammed in this between state, where he had some logic but no fear. 

Dark Places -Pg 276

   Suddenly Diondra and Trey were grabbing his hands, Trey's grip tight and hot, Diondra's limp, sticky, as they stood in a circle around their weapons. The moonlight was making everything glow. Diondra's face looked like a mask, all hollows and hills, and when she thrust her chin up toward the moon, and between her open mouth and the pile of metal Ben got a hard-on and didn't care.

Dark Places -Pg 275

 And then as soon as he thought he needed a gun, shoot himself and end this, came a big air bubble of relief that spread through him, soothed his veins, and he realized he'd been holding his breath and started gulping air, and then felt fucking good. Fucking smart to breathe air, that's what it was. He felt he was expanding, turning big, undeniable. Like no matter what he did, it was the right choice, yes sir, sure thing, like he could line up all the skyful of choices he'd need to make in the coming months and he could shoot them down like carnival animals and win something big. Huge. Hurray for Ben, up on everyone's shoulders so the world can fucking cheer. 

Dark Places -Pg 261

   Patty's head was heavy, she willed herself not to move. She would just keep her head right there, on the desk, until someone told her what to do. She was good at this, she sometimes sat for hours without leaving a chair, her head bobbing like a nursing-home inmate, thinking about her childhood, when her parents had their list of chores for her, and told her when to go to bed and when to get up and what to do during the day, and no one ever asked her to decide things. 

Dark Places -Pg 247

 The sky was draining quickly now, the horizon just a cuticle of pink. I realized I was humming "Uncle John's Band" to myself for no good reason. 

Dark Places -Pg 219

   "You all redheads?" Collins said. "Where's the red come from, you Irish?" 

   Patty thought immediately of her always-conversation with Len about their red hair, and then she thought, The farm's going away. How did I forget that the farm's going away?

Dark Places -Pg 216

 "You know, you all want it to be real, so someone moves the heart-thingie a little and you know someone's moving it, but part of you thinks maybe it's real, it's really a ghost, and no one has to say anything, you just all kind of know you've agreed to believe."

Dark Places -Pg 212

   She kept talking like that, adding a sentence and then another, without asking to be let in, and that was probably why I decided to let her in.

Dark Places -Pg 209

 That's how I felt now, like I'd been sawing away at something and come to the end and here I was by myself again, in my small house with no job, no family, and I was holding two ends of fabric and didn't know what to do next. 

Dark Places -Pg 193

   I'd have never thought of Yellow 5 again without Ben reminding me. I wanted to tell him to make a list of things to recall, memories I couldn't pluck out of my brain on my own. 

Dark Places -Pg 179

   They walked into pure din. Michelle was trying to fry salami strips on the skillet, screaming at Debby to go away. Libby had a splatter of bright pink burns up one arm and a cheek where the grease had hit her, and was sitting on the floor, mouth wide, crying the way Patty had just been crying in the car: as if there was absolutely no hope, and even if there was, she wasn't up to the challenge. 

Dark Places -Pg 154

   She never wrote Mommy, I thought, we never called her that even as kids. I want my mommy, I thought. We never said that. I want my mom. I felt something loosen in me, that shouldn't have loosened. A stitch come undone. 

Dark Places -Pg 145

   Patty wondered how many hours she and Diane had spent rumbling around in cars together: a thousand? Two thousand? Maybe if you added it all up, a sum total of two years, put end to end, the way mattress companies did: You spend a third of your life asleep, why not do it on a ComfortCush? Eight years standing in lines, they say. Six years peeing. Put like that, life was grim. Two years waiting in the doctor's office, but a total of three hours watching Debby at breakfast laughing until milk started dribbling down her chin. Two weeks eating soppy pancakes her girls made for her, the middle still sour with batter. Only one hour staring in amazement as Ben unconsciously tucked his baseball cap behind his ears in a gesture mirror-perfect to what his grandpa did.