Sharp Objects Series Quotes

Had things turned out differently, I might have amused myself with a series of heart-wretched lovers. I might have dallied with brilliant men. I might have married.

I blinked and looked again—but it was still out there, a shiny chrome disc zigzagging around in the sky. My eyes struggled to track the object through a series of increasingly fast, impossibly sharp turns that would have juiced a human being, had there been any aboard. The disc streaked toward the distant horizon, then came to an instantaneous stop just above it. It hovered there motionless over the distant tree line for a few seconds, as if scanning

First of all, I'll tell you who I'm not. I'm not your enemy, so you can put the sharp pointy objects away,' he responded in a light conversational tone, obviously not deterred by my abrasiveness, which only pissed me off more to know he didn't find me to be a threat at all. 'Well, first of all, I'll be the judge of that,' I cut him off before he could continue. 'And second of all, I'm not interested in who you're not,' I added. 'So you're saying you're interested in who I am?' He gave me a moment to process what he said before a smile broke on his face. My cheeks flamed. 'Hardly. Just interested in whether or not I'll be seeing you around again,' I was seething and beginning to shake with indignation. 'So you want to see me again?

The first general method is the give-him-something-to-play-with-that-he-can't-break school of thought. This usually means a nice pink rattle to play with. It may even be a more complicated toy than a rattle, but it's still a toy. Presented with such an object the child promptly looks at it (which is why toys have bright colors), bangs it to find out if it makes a noise (which is why rattles rattle), feels it (which is why toys don't have sharp edges), tastes it (which is why the paint is nonpoisonous), and even smells it (we have not yet figured out how toys ought to smell, which is why they don't smell at all). This process takes about ninety seconds. Now that he knows all he wants to know about the toy for the present, the child promptly abandons it and turns his attention to the box in which it came. The child finds the box just as interesting as the toy-which is why we should always buy toys that come in boxes-and learns all about the box. This also takes about ninety seconds. In fact, the child will frequently pay more attention to the box than to the toy itself. Because he is allowed to break the box, he may be able to learn how it is made. This is an advantage he does not have with the toy itself since we make toys unbreakable, which of course reduces his ability to learn.

Suddenly he felt his foot catch on something and he stumbled over one of the trailing cables that lay across the laboratory floor. The cable went tight and pulled one of the instruments monitoring the beam over, sending it falling sideways and knocking the edge of the frame that held the refractive shielding plate in position. For what seemed like a very long time the stand wobbled back and forth before it tipped slowly backwards with a crash. ‘Take cover!’ Professor Pike screamed, diving behind one of the nearby workbenches as the other Alpha students scattered, trying to shield themselves behind the most solid objects they could find. The beam punched straight through the laboratory wall in a cloud of vapour and alarm klaxons started wailing all over the school. Professor Pike scrambled across the floor towards the bundle of thick power cables that led to the super-laser, pulling them from the back of the machine and extinguishing the bright green beam. ‘Oops,’ Franz said as the emergency lighting kicked in and the rest of the Alphas slowly emerged from their hiding places. At the back of the room there was a perfectly circular, twenty-centimetre hole in the wall surrounded by scorch marks. ‘I am thinking that this is not being good.’ Otto walked cautiously up to the smouldering hole, glancing nervously over his shoulder at the beam emitter that was making a gentle clicking sound as it cooled down. ‘Woah,’ he said as he peered into the hole. Clearly visible were a series of further holes beyond that got smaller and smaller with perspective. Dimly visible at the far end was what could only be a small circle of bright daylight. ‘Erm, I don’t know how to tell you this, Franz,’ Otto said, turning towards his friend with a broad grin on his face, ‘but it looks like you just made a hole in the school.’ ‘Oh dear,’ Professor Pike said, coming up beside Otto and also peering into the hole. ‘I do hope that we haven’t damaged anything important.’ ‘Or anyone important,’ Shelby added as she and the rest of the Alphas gathered round. ‘It is not being my fault,’ Franz moaned. ‘I am tripping over the cable.’ A couple of minutes later, the door at the far end of the lab hissed open and Chief Dekker came running into the room, flanked by two guards in their familiar orange jumpsuits. Otto and the others winced as they saw her. It was well known already that she had no particular love for H.I.V.E.’s Alpha stream and she seemed to have a special dislike for their year in particular. ‘What happened?’ she demanded as she strode across the room towards the Professor. Her thin, tight lips and sharp cheekbones gave the impression that she was someone who’d heard of this thing called smiling but had decided that it was not for her. ‘There was a slight . . . erm . . . malfunction,’ the Professor replied with a fleeting glance in Franz’s direction. ‘Has anyone been injured?’ ‘It doesn’t look like it,’ Dekker replied tersely, ‘but I think it’s safe to say that Colonel Francisco won’t be using that particular toilet cubicle again.’ Franz visibly paled at the thought of the Colonel finding out that he had been in any way responsible for whatever indignity he had just suffered. He had a sudden horribly clear vision of many laps of the school gym somewhere in his not too distant future.

The object had a metal handle about seven inches long, shaped like the handle of a spoon. Where the bowl would have been, there was a row of five closely-spaced, pointy-edged stainless-steel wheels, each about the size of a quarter. The wheels spun freely, fashioned with a series of evenly-spaced sharp pins.