Top 380 Paula Hawkins Quotes (2026 Update)
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301. “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

302. “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

303. “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

304. “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

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

— Paula Hawkins

306. “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

307. “For some reason, I am certain that there is something I’m missing, something vital. Perhaps this is just more self-deception, yet another attempt to prove to myself that I’m not worthless.”

— Paula Hawkins

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

— Paula Hawkins

309. “Martin put his hand on my forearm and said, “It’s great to see you, Rachel.” His pity was almost palpable. I’d never realized, not until the last year or two of my life, how shaming it is to be pitied.”

— Paula Hawkins

310. “The behaviour you’re describing – reading your emails, going through your Internet browser history – you describe all this as though it is commonplace, as though it is normal. It isn’t, Megan. It isn’t normal to invade someone’s privacy to that degree. It’s what is often seen as a form of emotional abuse.”

— Paula Hawkins

311. “I wanted to rest my head on the headrest of the chair, close my eyes, breathe in the scent of the pine trees and listen to the birds. I wanted to hold your hand and stay like that all day.”

— Paula Hawkins

312. “There’s something covering my face, I can’t breathe, I’m suffocating. When I surface into wakefulness, I’m gasping for air and my chest hurts. I sit up, eyes wide, and see something moving in the corner of the room, a dense centre of blackness that keeps growing, and I almost cry out – and then I’m properly awake and there’s nothing there, but I am sitting up in bed and my cheeks are wet with tears.”

— Paula Hawkins

313. “I sit up, eyes wide, and see something moving in the corner of the room, a dense centre of blackness that keeps growing, and I almost cry out – and then I’m properly awake and there’s nothing there, but I am sitting up in bed and my cheeks are wet with tears.”

— Paula Hawkins

314. “And in any case, I had made my decision. To do the right thing,.”

— Paula Hawkins

315. “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

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

— Paula Hawkins

317. “Louise’s grief was like the river: constant and ever-changing. It rippled, flooded, ebbed and flowed, some days cold and dark and deep, some days swift and blinding.”

— Paula Hawkins

318. “I know that on warm summer evenings, the occupants of this house, Jason and Jess, sometimes climb out of the large sash window to sit on the makeshift terrace on top of the kitchen-extension roof.”

— Paula Hawkins

319. “There’s an explosion of pain, white before my eyes, and I crumple to my knees.”

— Paula Hawkins

320. “As for him “feeling dead”, that’s probably just a consequence of him being gone from your life for so long. In some sense he no longer feels real to you.”

— Paula Hawkins

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

— Paula Hawkins

322. “I’m well aware there is no job more important than that of raising a child, but the problem is that it isn’t valued. Not in the sense that counts to me at the moment, which is financial.”

— Paula Hawkins

323. “Twice a day, I am offered a view into other lives, just for a moment. There’s something comforting about the sight of strangers safe at home.”

— Paula Hawkins

324. “I know immediately that’s it. I’m awake. The more I want to be oblivious, the less I can be. Life and light will not let me be.”

— Paula Hawkins

325. “I’m stupidly pleased that he doesn’t like her, either; another thing we have in common, another thread to bind us.”

— Paula Hawkins

326. “He closed his eyes so that he didn’t have to watch me choke.”

— Paula Hawkins

327. “Tom’s whole life was constructed on lies – falsehoods and half-truths told to make him look better, stronger, more interesting than he was.”

— Paula Hawkins

328. “All those plans I had – photography courses and cookery classes – when it comes down to it, they feel a bit pointless, as if I’m playing at real life instead of actually living it.”

— Paula Hawkins

329. “I can’t do this, I can’t just be a wife.”

— Paula Hawkins

330. “But with the mind, I think, there are no quick fixes.”

— Paula Hawkins

331. “My legs are still trembling as I climb the steps to Corly station. I’ve been shaking like this for hours, it must be the adrenaline, my heart just won’t slow down. The train is packed – no chance of a seat here, it’s not like getting on at Euston, so I have to stand, midway through a carriage. It’s like a sweatbox. I’m trying to breathe slowly, my eyes cast down to my feet. I’m just trying to get a handle on what I’m feeling. Exultation, fear, confusion and guilt. Mostly guilt.”

— Paula Hawkins

332. “She wanted to chat in person and I thought it might be best. I’m sorry, OK? We just talked. We met in a crappy coffee shop in Ashbury and talked for twenty minutes – half an hour, tops. OK?”

— Paula Hawkins

333. “All those plans I had – photography courses and cookery classes – when it comes down to it, they.”

— Paula Hawkins

334. “I just had to hope that one day we would have the money, and in the meantime I had to bite back the tears that came, hot and fast, every time I saw a stranger with a bump, every time I heard someone else’s happy news.”

— Paula Hawkins

335. “Maybe that was the moment when things started to go wrong, the moment when I imagined us no longer a couple, but a family; and after that, once I had that picture in my head, just the two of us could never be enough.”

— Paula Hawkins

336. “If he thinks I’m going to sit around crying over him, he’s got another think coming.”

— Paula Hawkins

337. “Then I wait. Times and dates, mostly. Not dates. Days. Monday.”

— Paula Hawkins

338. “It’s the only thing I have left, my last roll of the dice. If this doesn’t work, I have to let it go. I just have to let it go.”

— Paula Hawkins

339. “At parties, he often holds her hand, even though they’ve been together years. They respect each other, they don’t put each other down.”

— Paula Hawkins

340. “Cathy gets up early to clean the house every Saturday, no matter what. It could be her birthday, it could be the morning of the Rapture – Cathy will get up early on Saturday to clean.”

— Paula Hawkins

341. “The trick is to fool yourself into thinking that you’re headed somewhere: just pick a spot and set off towards it.”

— Paula Hawkins

342. “Yesterday – sensible, clearheaded, 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. She has no past, no future. She exists purely in the moment. Drunk Rachel – wanting to be part of the story, needing a way to persuade Scott to talk to her – she lied. I lied.”

— Paula Hawkins

343. “I was still young, there was still plenty of time, but failure cloaked me like a mantle, it overwhelmed me, dragged me under, and I gave up hope.”

— Paula Hawkins

344. “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

345. “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

346. “I could feel the colour rising to my cheeks; if this man didn’t know I was lying then, he didn’t deserve to be on the police force.”

— Paula Hawkins

347. “I couldn’t possibly see her expression at that distance, but I felt when I was looking at her that she was alone. More than alone – lonely.”

— Paula Hawkins

348. “Cathy’s a nice person, in a forceful sort of way. She makes you notice her niceness.”

— Paula Hawkins

349. “I knew as I was agreeing that it wasn’t a good idea. What I know about Scott, from the papers, is almost nothing. What I know from my own observations, I don’t really know. I don’t know anything about Scott. I know things about Jason – who, I have to keep reminding myself, doesn’t exist. All I know for sure – for absolutely certain – is that Scott’s wife has been missing for a week. I know that he is probably a suspect. And I know, because I saw that kiss, that he has a motive to kill her.”

— Paula Hawkins

350. “It’s her voice.”

— Paula Hawkins