Top 380 Paula Hawkins Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “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

302. “What if the thing I’m looking for can never be found? What.”

— Paula Hawkins

303. “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

304. “Now, I think he might be dead.”

— Paula Hawkins

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

— Paula Hawkins

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

— Paula Hawkins

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

— Paula Hawkins

308. “It comes from shared experience, from knowing how it feels to be broken. Hollowness: that I understand.”

— Paula Hawkins

309. “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

310. “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

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

— Paula Hawkins

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

— Paula Hawkins

313. “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

314. “I keep trying to grasp at it, to hold on to it, but the harder I struggle, the fainter and the further away it gets.”

— Paula Hawkins

315. “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

316. “So I never feel bad enough. I feel bad, but the thing that I’ve done – it’s removed from me. It’s like it doesn’t belong to me.”

— Paula Hawkins

317. “Tom said he was going to patch it up, but he didn’t, and I didn’t want to pester him about it.”

— Paula Hawkins

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

— Paula Hawkins

319. “I went from being a drinker to being a drunk, and there’s nothing more boring than that.”

— Paula Hawkins

320. “I realize that perhaps, after all, she isn’t so different from me. She’s isolated and lonely too.”

— Paula Hawkins

321. “Murky, speculative stuff, a smear campaign on a dead woman. It’s despicable.”

— Paula Hawkins

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

— Paula Hawkins

323. “In the end I really thought I could just walk away from it, a little bruised, but no real harm done. But it’s not that simple any longer.”

— Paula Hawkins

324. “I see them as others do not; even their owners probably don’t see them from this perspective.”

— Paula Hawkins

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

— Paula Hawkins

326. “I’ll find something, here or elsewhere, I know I will.”

— Paula Hawkins

327. “No one warned you about that when you were younger, no one told you how slow you would become, and how bored you would be by your slowness.”

— Paula Hawkins

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

— Paula Hawkins

329. “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

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

— Paula Hawkins

331. “I didn’t want to draw attention to her resting place, but I couldn’t leave her without remembrance.”

— Paula Hawkins

332. “Upstairs, later. I’ve had too much to drink, I can’t see the computer screen properly, everything doubles, trebles. I can read if I hold my hand over one eye. It gives me a headache. Cathy is home, she called out to me and I told her I was in bed, unwell. She knows that I’m drinking.”

— Paula Hawkins

333. “He loves me so much it makes me ache.”

— Paula Hawkins

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

— Paula Hawkins

335. “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

336. “It’s her voice.”

— Paula Hawkins

337. “I wring the cloth out over the sink and run cold water over my hands.”

— Paula Hawkins

338. “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

339. “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

340. “I wonder whether we would have loved the weaker, flawed, unembellished version. I think that I would. I would have forgiven his mistakes and his failures. I have committed enough of my own.”

— Paula Hawkins

341. “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

342. “He smiles – that wide, beautiful smile that used to make me melt – and I start to sob. 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.”

— Paula Hawkins

343. “I snap the laptop shut and jump to my feet, knocking my.”

— Paula Hawkins

344. “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

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

— Paula Hawkins

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

— Paula Hawkins

347. “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

348. “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

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

— Paula Hawkins

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

— Paula Hawkins