Top 380 Paula Hawkins Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “Maidstone,” he says, “in Kent. But I moved.”

— Paula Hawkins

302. “I think perhaps you are being rather hard on yourself.”

— Paula Hawkins

303. “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

304. “He captured movement, he registered nuance, he was empathetic on the page in a way he never seemed to achieve in real life.”

— Paula Hawkins

305. “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

306. “I feel like myself – the myself I used to be.”

— Paula Hawkins

307. “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

308. “I think of the things her real friends said about her: wonderful, funny, beautiful, warmhearted. Loved. She made a mistake. It happens.”

— Paula Hawkins

309. “For the first five years I knew him, I was never Rachel, always Rach.”

— Paula Hawkins

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

— Paula Hawkins

311. “I apologized without being sure what I was apologizing for.”

— Paula Hawkins

312. “I wait for the memory to come. Sometimes it takes a while. Sometimes it’s there in front of my eyes in seconds. Sometimes it doesn’t come at all.”

— Paula Hawkins

313. “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

314. “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

315. “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

316. “This tabloid story, supposedly leaked by someone in the police, about Megan’s involvement in the death of a child.”

— Paula Hawkins

317. “I just listen. Sitting here in the morning, eyes closed.”

— Paula Hawkins

318. “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

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

— Paula Hawkins

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

— Paula Hawkins

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

— Paula Hawkins

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

— Paula Hawkins

323. “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

324. “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

325. “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

326. “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

327. “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

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

— Paula Hawkins

329. “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

330. “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

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

— Paula Hawkins

332. “I half ran back to the car, feeling needlessly afraid. I was thinking of the violence of my last meeting with Scott, of the way he was at the end – wild and paranoiac, on the edge of madness. There’ll be no peace for him now. How can there be? I think about that, and the way he used to be – the way they used to be, the way I imagined them to be – and I feel bereft. I feel their loss, too.”

— Paula Hawkins

333. “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

334. “He wanted me to talk afterwards, about what happened.”

— Paula Hawkins

335. “You know you can’t believe half the stuff they print in the newspapers.”

— Paula Hawkins

336. “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

337. “I feel about an incident is proportionate not just to the gravity of the situation, but also to the number of people who have witnessed it.”

— Paula Hawkins

338. “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

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

— Paula Hawkins

340. “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

341. “Now, I think he might be dead.”

— Paula Hawkins

342. “When I look at Tom, I thank God that he found me, too, that I was there to rescue him from that woman. She’d have driven him mad in the end, I really think that – she’d have ground him down, she’d have made him into something he’s not.”

— Paula Hawkins

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

— Paula Hawkins

344. “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

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

— Paula Hawkins

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

— Paula Hawkins

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

— Paula Hawkins

348. “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

349. “That seemed a stupid reason, but adult stories were full of stupid cruelties:.”

— Paula Hawkins

350. “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