Top 380 Paula Hawkins Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “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

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

— Paula Hawkins

203. “I feel a sadness unlike anything I’ve ever felt before crashing over me like a wave, crushing the breath right out of me.”

— Paula Hawkins

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

— Paula Hawkins

205. “I am not the girl I used to be... it’s as if people can see the damage written all over me, can see it in my face, the way I hold myself, the way I move.”

— Paula Hawkins

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

— Paula Hawkins

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

— Paula Hawkins

208. “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

209. “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

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. “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

212. “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

213. “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

214. “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

215. “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

216. “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

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

— Paula Hawkins

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

— Paula Hawkins

219. “On the train on the way home, as I dissect all the ways that today went wrong, I’m surprised by the fact that I don’t feel as awful as I might. Thinking about it, I know why that is: I didn’t have a drink last night, and I have no desire to have one now. I am interested, for the first time in ages, in something other than my own misery. I have purpose. Or at least, I have a distraction.”

— Paula Hawkins

220. “It’s been so long since I’ve heard him say my name like that, and its making me hope.”

— Paula Hawkins

221. “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

222. “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

223. “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

224. “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

225. “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

226. “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

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

— Paula Hawkins

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

— Paula Hawkins

229. “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

230. “I’m on the train, looking out at a pile of clothes on the side of the tracks. Dark-blue cloth. A dress, I think, with a black belt. I can’t imagine how it ended up down there. That certainly wasn’t left behind by the engineers. We’re moving, glacially though, so I have plenty of time to look, and it seems to me that I’ve seen that dress before, I’ve seen someone wearing it. I can’t remember when. It’s very cold. Too cold for a dress like that. I think it might snow soon.”

— Paula Hawkins

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

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

— Paula Hawkins

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

— Paula Hawkins

235. “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

236. “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

237. “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

238. “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

239. “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

240. “The thing about being barren is that you’re not allowed to get away from it. Not when you’re in your thirties. My friends were having children, friends of friends were having children, pregnancy and birth and first birthday parties were everywhere. I was asked about it all the time.”

— Paula Hawkins

241. “Nel once told me that she only ever slept with married men, because they were discreet and undemanding and they let her get on with her life.”

— Paula Hawkins

242. “It’s all so much more complicated, but of course I can’t explain that to her. Anyway. That’s one of the reasons I’ve been shutting myself away, I suppose, because I don’t want to see the Watsons. Part.”

— Paula Hawkins

243. “I was in the underpass and he was coming towards me, one slap across the mouth and then his fist raised, keys in his hand, searing pain as the serrated metal smashed down against my skull.”

— Paula Hawkins

244. “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. I look around the room. My phone is not on the bedside table. My handbag is not on the floor, it’s not hanging over the back of the chair where I usually leave it. I must have had it, though, because I’m in the house, which means I have my keys.”

— Paula Hawkins

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

— Paula Hawkins

246. “Some days, I feel so bad that I have to drink; some days I feel so bad that I can’t.”

— Paula Hawkins

247. “I’m going to have to be strong, that’s all there is to it.”

— Paula Hawkins

248. “I forgot to feel what I was supposed to be feeling...”

— Paula Hawkins

249. “They always go for you, the lonely ones, don’t they? They make a beeline straight for you.”

— Paula Hawkins

250. “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