Top 380 Paula Hawkins Quotes (2024 Update)
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201. “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

202. “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

203. “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

204. “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

205. “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

206. “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

207. “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

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

— Paula Hawkins

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

— Paula Hawkins

210. “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

211. “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

212. “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

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

— Paula Hawkins

214. “If you want someone badly enough, you’ll do anything to have them.”

— Paula Hawkins

215. “The truth is, I never felt bad for Rachel, even before I found out about her drinking and how difficult she was, how she was making his life a misery. She just wasn’t real to me, and anyway, I was enjoying myself too much. Being the other woman is a huge turn-on, there’s no point denying it: you’re the one he can’t help but betray his wife for, even though he loves her. That’s just how irresistible you are.”

— Paula Hawkins

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

— Paula Hawkins

217. “Was it then that Tom started to look at me differently, his disappointment mirroring my own? After all he gave up for me, for the two of us to be together, I let him think that he wasn’t enough.”

— Paula Hawkins

218. “It’s an odd thing to say, but I think this all the time. I don’t feel bad enough. I know what I’m responsible for, I know all the terrible things I’ve done, even if I don’t remember the details – but I feel distanced from those actions. I feel them at one remove.”

— Paula Hawkins

219. “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

220. “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

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

— Paula Hawkins

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

— Paula Hawkins

223. “I think it’s a process. It’s not simple, you know? I don’t know if there will be a time when I can say that it’s worked. That I’m better.”

— Paula Hawkins

224. “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. She has no past, no future. She exists purely in the moment.”

— Paula Hawkins

225. “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

226. “The police think I’m a rubbernecker. They think I’m a stalker, a nut-case, mentally unstable.”

— Paula Hawkins

227. “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

228. “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

229. “The more I want to be oblivious, the less I can be. Life and light will not let me be. I lie there, listening to the sound of Cathy’s urgent, cheerful busyness, and I think about the clothes on the side of the railway line and about Jess kissing her lover in the morning sunshine.”

— Paula Hawkins

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

— Paula Hawkins

231. “I’m not just going to be ignored.”

— Paula Hawkins

232. “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

233. “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

234. “Don’t expect me to be sane, I can’t be, not with you.”

— Paula Hawkins

235. “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

236. “And he was right, I know we can’t. We shouldn’t, we ought not to, but we will. It won’t be the last time. He won’t say no to me. I was thinking about it on the way home, and that’s the thing I like most about it, having power over someone. That’s the intoxicating thing.”

— Paula Hawkins

237. “I can’t deny that there’s a part of me that finds the idea of meeting Kamal thrilling.”

— Paula Hawkins

238. “I remember an argument, right at the end, when things were about as bad as they could be; he lost his temper with me. “What happened to you, Rachel?” he asked me. “When did you become so weak?” I don’t know. I don’t know where that strength went, I don’t remember losing it. I think that over time it got chipped away, bit by bit, by life, by the living of it.”

— Paula Hawkins

239. “He is watching me, waiting for me to say something, to.”

— Paula Hawkins

240. “Tom said about Scott and Megan came from Anna, and no one knows better than I do that she can’t be trusted.”

— Paula Hawkins

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

— Paula Hawkins

242. “I didn’t even get upset. I was just astounded. And when I brought it up with Tom – calmly, matter-of-factly – he was just as baffled as I was.”

— Paula Hawkins

243. “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

244. “Surely she would call me, wouldn’t she? She would know how panicked... how desperate I would be. She’s not vindictive like that, is she?”

— Paula Hawkins

245. “It’s nice being out early, before the school run, before the commute gets going; the streets are empty and clean, the day full of possibility.”

— Paula Hawkins

246. “I can smell her skin. I can feel how cold she was at the end. I can’t get rid of her. I don’t want to. I want to love her.”

— Paula Hawkins

247. “I wasn’t being strong. I was being reckless, and there’s no telling how much damage I’ve done.”

— Paula Hawkins

248. “It’s not a photo I’ve seen before.”

— Paula Hawkins

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

— Paula Hawkins

250. “That was my first home. Not my parents’ place, not a flatshare with other students, my first home. I can’t bear to look at it. Well, I can, I do, I want to, I don’t want to, I try not to. Every day I tell myself not to look, and every day I look. I can’t help myself, even though there is nothing I want to see there, even though anything I do see will hurt me. Even.”

— Paula Hawkins