Top 380 Paula Hawkins Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “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

202. “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

203. “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

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

— Paula Hawkins

205. “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

206. “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

207. “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

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

— Paula Hawkins

209. “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

210. “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

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

— Paula Hawkins

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

— Paula Hawkins

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

— Paula Hawkins

214. “Maybe if I’d done all that, I wouldn’t have ended up here, not knowing what to do next. Or maybe, if I’d done all that, I’d have ended up exactly where I am and I would be perfectly contented.”

— Paula Hawkins

215. “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

216. “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

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

— Paula Hawkins

218. “I can imagine the feel of his hands, the weight of them, reassuring and protective. Sometimes I catch myself trying to remember the last time I had meaningful physical contact with another person, just a hug or a heartfelt squeeze of my hand, and my heart twitches.”

— Paula Hawkins

219. “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

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

— Paula Hawkins

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

— Paula Hawkins

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

— Paula Hawkins

223. “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

224. “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

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

— Paula Hawkins

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

— Paula Hawkins

227. “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

228. “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

229. “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

230. “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

231. “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

232. “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

233. “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

234. “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

235. “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

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

— Paula Hawkins

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

— Paula Hawkins

238. “Look at the life they have, look at how beautiful it is! I have never understood how people can blithely disregard the damage they do by following their hearts.”

— Paula Hawkins

239. “And I have to get up early tomorrow morning to catch the train.”

— Paula Hawkins

240. “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

241. “It was when I was washing my face afterwards, when I saw how tired I looked, how blotchy and bedraggled and bloody awful, that I felt it again – that need to put on a dress and high heels, to blow-dry my hair and put on some makeup and walk down the street and have men turn and look at me.”

— Paula Hawkins

242. “I don’t know their names either, so I had to name them myself. Jason, because he’s handsome in a British film star kind of way, not a Depp or a Pitt, but a Firth, or a Jason Isaacs. And Jess just goes with Jason, and it goes with her. It fits her, pretty and carefree as she is. They’re a match, they’re a set. They’re happy, I can tell. They’re what I used to be, they’re Tom and me, five years ago. They’re what I lost, they’re everything I want to be. Evening.”

— Paula Hawkins

243. “This shouldn’t matter, but it does: the sense of shame I feel about an incident is proportionate not just to the gravity of the situation, but also to the number of people who witnessed it.”

— Paula Hawkins

244. “You were blind drunk. Filthy, stinking drunk –.”

— Paula Hawkins

245. “I’m fine,” I say, but I have to clench my jaw to stop my teeth from chattering.”

— Paula Hawkins

246. “Tom bends down, slips his hands into the waistband of my jeans, grabs hold of them and drags me along the floor into the kitchen. I’m kicking out with my legs, trying to get a hold of something, but I can’t. I can’t see properly – tears are stinging my eyes, everything is a blur. The pain in my head is excruciating as I bump along the floor, and I feel a wave of nausea come over me. There’s hot, white pain as something connects with my temple. Then nothing.”

— Paula Hawkins

247. “It’s still warm; there are clouds of midges under the trees and the sunshine is streaming through the leaves, bathing the path in an oddly subterranean light. Above our heads, magpies chatter angrily.”

— Paula Hawkins

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

— Paula Hawkins

249. “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

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

— Paula Hawkins