Top 380 Paula Hawkins Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “Yesterday – sensible, clear-headed, right-thinking – I decided I must accept that my part in this story was over. But my better angels lost again, defeated by drink, by the person I am when I drink. Drunk Rachel sees no consequences, she is either excessively expansive and optimistic or wrapped up in hate.”

— Paula Hawkins

202. “Irene had read in a newspaper article that the happiest people on earth were unmarried childless women. She could see why-there was a lot to be said for that sort of freedom, for not being answerable to anyone, for living exactly how you pleased. Only, once you’d fallen in love you could never be truly free, could you? It was too late by then.”

— Paula Hawkins

203. “Perhaps this is just more self-deception, yet another attempt to prove to myself that I’m not worthless. But perhaps it’s real.”

— Paula Hawkins

204. “I watch him come, I watch him, and I don’t move until he’s almost upon me, and then I swing. I jam the vicious twist of the corkscrew into his neck.”

— Paula Hawkins

205. “I feel breathless and afraid. I can’t explain it. I can’t remember what happened, but I can feel it, the fear and confusion.”

— Paula Hawkins

206. “I only feel like myself when I’m running.”

— Paula Hawkins

207. “I was a mistress of self-reinvention.”

— Paula Hawkins

208. “I’m not here for you, I couldn’t be less interested.”

— Paula Hawkins

209. “One piece of the memory led to the next. It’s as though I’d been blundering about in the dark for days, weeks, months, then finally caught hold of something. Like running my hand along a wall to find my way from one room to the next. Shifting shadows started at last to coalesce, and after a while my eyes became accustomed to the gloom, and I could see.”

— Paula Hawkins

210. “He had this look on his face of shock, of hurt. I wanted to say to her, It’s no good, you won’t be able to help him now, but then I realized she wasn’t trying to stop the bleeding. She was making sure. Twisting the corkscrew in, farther and farther, ripping into his throat, and all the time she was talking to him softly, softly. I couldn’t hear what she was saying.”

— Paula Hawkins

211. “That’s what he always used to say to me. Don’t expect me to be sane, Anna. Not with you.”

— Paula Hawkins

212. “It’s not the worst thing I’ve ever done, it’s not as if I fell over in public, or yelled at a stranger in the street. It’s not as if I humiliated my husband at a summer barbecue by shouting abuse at the wife of one of.”

— Paula Hawkins

213. “I can’t believe it, can’t believe we are brought to this, that the greatest happiness I have ever known – my life with him – was an illusion. He.”

— Paula Hawkins

214. “It’s a glorious evening, warm but not too close, the sun starting its lazy descent, shadows lengthening and the light just beginning to burnish the trees with gold.”

— Paula Hawkins

215. “Parents don’t care about anything but their children. They are the centre of the universe; they are all that really counts.”

— Paula Hawkins

216. “But I know something happened on Saturday. I knew it when I looked into that dark tunnel under the railway line, my blood turning to ice water in my veins. Blackouts happen, and it isn’t just a matter of being a bit hazy about getting home from the club or forgetting what it was that was so funny when you were chatting in the pub. It’s different. Total black; hours lost, never to be retrieved.”

— Paula Hawkins

217. “I close my eyes and let the darkness grow and spread until it morphs from a feeling of sadness into something worse: a memory, a flashback.”

— Paula Hawkins

218. “I feel annoyed with myself, because I think I do believe her. I think I’ve always known that Tom lies. It’s just that in the past, his lies tended to suit me.”

— Paula Hawkins

219. “Everything is material. And comedy equals tragedy plus time. Isn’t that how it goes?”

— Paula Hawkins

220. “I’ve always liked to drink. But I did become sadder, and sadness gets boring after a while, for the sad person and for everyone around them. And then I went from being a drinker to being a drunk, and there’s nothing more boring than that. I’m.”

— Paula Hawkins

221. “Nobody felt eighty. When Irene considered it, she thought that she probably felt somewhere around thirty-five. Forty, maybe. That was a good age to feel, wasn’t it? You knew who you were then. You weren’t still flighty or unsure, but you had not yet had time to harden, to become unyielding.”

— Paula Hawkins

222. “My face is hot, there is cold sweat under my armpits and at the base of my spine.”

— Paula Hawkins

223. “Beautiful sunshine, cloudless skies, no one to play with, nothing to do.”

— Paula Hawkins

224. “You have to be true to yourself, don’t you? That’s all I’m doing, being true to my real self.”

— Paula Hawkins

225. “I can’t stand the silence. I have to talk out loud just to make it go away.”

— Paula Hawkins

226. “She made a mistake. It happens. We are none of us perfect.”

— Paula Hawkins

227. “I’m doing the things she did: drinking alone and snooping on him. The things she did and he hated. But recently – as recently as this morning – things have shifted. If he’s going to lie, then I’m going to check up on him. That’s a fair deal, isn’t it? I feel I’m owed a bit of fairness.”

— Paula Hawkins

228. “Sometimes I feel like seeing if I can track down anybody from the old days, but then I think, what would I talk to them about now? They wouldn’t even recognize Megan the happily married suburbanite. In any case, I can’t risk looking backwards, it’s always a bad idea.”

— Paula Hawkins

229. “This is what he does – this is what he always does. He’s a master at it, making me feel as though everything is my fault, making me feel worthless.”

— Paula Hawkins

230. “Kindness was her new project. She hoped it might be gentler on the soul than anger.”

— Paula Hawkins

231. “I felt dizzy, as though I were having an out-of-body experience, as though I were looking out at myself.”

— Paula Hawkins

232. “I have to keep things vague, jumble up all the men, the lovers and the exes, but I tell myself that’s OK, because it doesn’t matter who they are. It matters how they make me feel.”

— Paula Hawkins

233. “I just wanted to say thank you, anyway. For coming forward. It was actually... it sounds odd, but it was good to talk to someone... someone I’m not close to. I felt as though I could think more rationally.”

— Paula Hawkins

234. “The train stops at the signal as usual. I can see Jess standing on the patio in front of the French doors. She’s wearing a bright print dress, her feet are bare.”

— Paula Hawkins

235. “I don’t mind, because it reassures him that there’s nothing going on, that I’m not up to anything. And that’s good for me – it’s good for us – even if it isn’t true. And I can’t really be angry with him, because he has good reason to be suspicious. I’ve given him cause in the past and probably will again. I am not a model wife. I can’t be. No matter how much I love him, it won’t be enough.”

— Paula Hawkins

236. “There are familiar faces on these trains, people I see every week, going to and fro. I recognize them and they probably recognize me.”

— Paula Hawkins

237. “So this is what all the fuss is about! Never knew love like this! Happiest day of my life! I thought about him writing that – knowing that I would see it, that I would read those words and they would kill me, and writing it anyway. He didn’t care. Parents don’t care about anything but their children. They are the centre of the universe; they are all that really counts. Nobody else is important, no one else’s suffering or joy matters, none of it is real.”

— Paula Hawkins

238. “I’m frightened, but I’m not sure what I’m afraid of, which just exacerbates the fear. I don’t even know whether there’s anything to be frightened of.”

— Paula Hawkins

239. “I can’t reply because my mind has gone somewhere else entirely, and it’s not.”

— Paula Hawkins

240. “I had a teacher at school who told me once that I was a mistress of self-reinvention. I.”

— Paula Hawkins

241. “I just can’t see us happy and relaxed like that. Not now. Not after what I’ve just done. I was so convinced this morning that getting everything out in the open would be the best way – not just the best way, the only way. No more lying. No more hiding.”

— Paula Hawkins

242. “I feel like myself – the myself I used to be.”

— Paula Hawkins

243. “She needed to tell him that she’d looked at his latest piece of writing too, that she didn’t like it, all the to-ing and fro-ing, all that jumping around in the timeline. Like the last one, the awful crime thing. Just start at the beginning, for God’s sake.”

— Paula Hawkins

244. “If I could just discover how to focus on this happiness, enjoy the moment, not wonder about where the next high is coming from – then everything will be alright.”

— Paula Hawkins

245. “I had every right to be angry, didn’t I? We were trying to have a baby – shouldn’t we have been prepared to make sacrifices? I would have cut off a limb if it meant I could have had a child. Couldn’t he have forgone a weekend in Vegas?”

— Paula Hawkins

246. “But appearances are deceptive, for this is a deathly place. The water, dark and glassy, hides what lies beneath: weeds to entangle you, to drag you down; jagged rocks to slice through flesh. Above looms the grey slate cliff: a dare, a provocation.”

— Paula Hawkins

247. “The horror of it is almost too much to bear. I cannot understand how Scott is still breathing. It should have killed him, should have sucked the life right out of him. Somehow, though, he is still here.”

— Paula Hawkins

248. “It’s not that unusual, death by train. Two to three hundred a year, they say, so at least one every couple of days. I’m not sure how many of those are accidental.”

— Paula Hawkins

249. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had anything worth keeping a clear head for.”

— Paula Hawkins

250. “He’s the big hole in my life, in the middle of my soul. Or maybe he was just the beginning of it. I don’t know.”

— Paula Hawkins