Paula Hawkins Quotes & Sayings

Sometimes, I don't want to go anywhere, I think I'll be happy if I never have to set foot outside the house again. — Paula Hawkins

I just don't know whether he's the condemned man or the executioner. — Paula Hawkins

I was commissioned to write some romantic fiction, and I really liked doing those, and they were very instructive in terms of building characters and plots. But it never felt right for me. — Paula Hawkins

The last thing I need is rest. — Paula Hawkins

That's what he always used to say to me. Don't expect me to be sane, Anna. Not with you. — Paula Hawkins

Life is not a paragraph, and death is no parenthesis.

(This is a reference to an E.E. Cummings poem within the author's work) — Paula Hawkins

dig my fingernails into my palms. — Paula Hawkins

I don't believe in soul mates, but there's an understanding between us that I just haven't felt before, or at least, not for a long time. It comes from shared experience, from knowing how it feels to be broken. — Paula Hawkins

because if you want someone badly enough, morals (and certainly professionalism) don't come into it. You'll do anything to have them. He just doesn't want me badly enough. — Paula Hawkins

Parents don't care 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

I can't do this, I can't just be a wife. — Paula Hawkins

It doesn't feel like it was me who was doing that thing. And it's so hard to feel responsible for something you don't remember. 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

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

He lies to himself the way he lies to me. He believes this. He actually believes that he was good to me. — Paula Hawkins

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

I'd never realized, not until the last year or two of my life, how shaming it is to be pitied. — Paula Hawkins

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

When I'm writing, I don't read much crime at all - you don't want to get distracted by other people's plots. — Paula Hawkins

I just listen. Sitting here in the morning, eyes closed — Paula Hawkins

I'm not here for you, I couldn't be less interested — Paula Hawkins

I'm starting to see what he must have seen in her. What he must have loved. — Paula Hawkins

My idea of fun is to sit looking at a blank wall in a cottage, making up stories in utter silence. The thought of going back to work in an office is horrendous. — Paula Hawkins

I have lost control over everything, even the places in my head. — Paula Hawkins

It actually wasn't about her child at all, although the fact that the child never stops whinging did make her hard to love. — Paula Hawkins

On the train, the tears come, and I don't care if people are watching me; for all they know, my dog might have been run over. I might have been diagnosed with a terminal illness. I might be a barren, divorced, soon-to-be-homeless alcoholic. — Paula Hawkins

I am no longer just a girl on the train, going back and forth without point or purpose. — Paula Hawkins

Women become invisible as they age; men become impotent. — Paula Hawkins

He'll be so happy. He'll be mental with joy when I tell him. The thought that she might not be his won't even cross his mind. Telling him would be cruel, it would break his heart, and I don't want to hurt him. I've never wanted to hurt him. I can't help the way I am. — Paula Hawkins

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

No matter how much I love him, it won't be enough. — Paula Hawkins

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

I'm well aware that there is no job more important than that of raising a child, but the problem is that it isn't valued. — Paula Hawkins

The first Amy Silver book was commissioned, and they were not books that came completely from me. They weren't necessarily the sort of books I read, and although I enjoyed doing them very much, and they were great training, I never felt completely comfortable in that genre. — Paula Hawkins

It's not until we get into the car that I notice he has blood on his hand. "You've cut yourself," I say. He doesn't reply; his knuckles are white on the steering wheel. "Tom, I needed to talk to you," I say. I'm trying to be conciliatory, trying to be grown-up about this, but I suppose it's a little late for that. "I'm sorry about hassling you, but for God's sake! You just cut me off. You - " "It's OK," he says, his voice soft. "I'm not . . . I'm pissed off about something else. It's not you." He turns his head and tries to smile at me, but fails. "Problems with the ex," he says. "You know how it is." "What happened to your hand?" I ask him. "Problems with the ex," he says again, and there's a nasty edge to his voice. We drive the rest of the way to Corly Wood in silence. — Paula Hawkins

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

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

Obviously, my name is known now, but I don't think people generally tend to recognize authors very much. People like J. K. Rowling maybe, Gillian Flynn might be recognized, but I reckon she could walk by me on the street, and I wouldn't know who she was. — Paula Hawkins

The darkness gets bigger; it's pushing at the edges of my skull, clouding my vision. I grab Evie by the hand and start to drag her inside. She protests vociferously. — Paula Hawkins

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

I sit there on the floor with the picture in front of me and think about how things get broken all the time by accident, and how sometimes you just don't get round to getting them fixed. — Paula Hawkins

After Tom leaves for work, I take Evie to the park, we play on the swings and the little wooden rocking horses, and when I put her back into her buggy she falls asleep almost immediately, which is my cue to go shopping. We cut through the back streets towards the big Sainsbury's. It's a bit of a roundabout way of getting there, but it's quiet, with very little traffic, and in any case we get to pass number thirty-four Cranham Road. It gives me a little frisson even now, walking past that house - butterflies suddenly swarm in my stomach, and a smile comes to my lips and colour to my cheeks. I remember hurrying up the front steps, hoping none of the neighbours would see me letting myself in, getting myself ready in the bathroom, putting on perfume, the kind of underwear you put on just to be taken off. Then I'd get a text message and he'd be at the door, and we'd have an hour or two in the bedroom upstairs. — Paula Hawkins

People think it's terribly sad to spend Christmas alone, but it's no sadder, really, than spending any other day alone, is it? — Paula Hawkins

Now look what you made me do. — Paula Hawkins

Every time I hear footsteps on the steps, my heart rate goes up. Every time I hear the clacking of high heels, I am seized with trepidation. — Paula Hawkins

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

So who do I want to be tomorrow? — Paula Hawkins

I want to say something to him, but the words keep evaporating, vanishing off my tongue before I have the chance to say them. I can taste them, but I can't tell if they are sweet or sour. — Paula Hawkins

I'm playing at real life instead of actually living it. — Paula Hawkins

He loves me so much it makes me ache. — Paula Hawkins

Certainly, there is a tendency to lump women who write similar types of books together, and it's not just in crime, is it? Women's fiction is supposedly a whole genre of itself. There's no male equivalent. — Paula Hawkins

I know people like to read about serial killers and spies, but most of us will never encounter these things. Sadly, most of the threats we encounter are at home. — Paula Hawkins

The memory doesn't fit with the reality, because I don't remember anger, raging fury. I remember fear. — Paula Hawkins

'The Woman on the Train' just didn't sound as good. I'll take care next time not to have 'girl' in the title. — Paula Hawkins

I've fallen. I must have slipped. Hit my head on something. I think I'm going to be sick. Everything is red. I can't get up. One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl . . . Three for a girl. I'm stuck on three, I just can't get any further. My head is thick with sounds, my mouth thick with blood. Three for a girl. I can hear the magpies - they're laughing, mocking me, a raucous cackling. A tiding. Bad tidings. I can see them now, black against the sun. Not the birds, something else. Someone's coming. Someone is speaking to me. Now look. Now look what you made me do. — Paula Hawkins

Having something commissioned made it easier for me to share my work and see it out there and have people read it without feeling like there was a piece of my soul on the page. — Paula Hawkins

She has no past, no future. She exists purely in the moment. Drunk — Paula Hawkins

The sort of enjoyment that we all get from that voyeuristic impulse of looking into other people's house as we pass them, and the idea that there might be something sinister or strange going on in the houses we pass every day or in our neighborhood, is a very compelling idea. — Paula Hawkins

The thing about being barren is that you're not allowed to get away from it. — Paula Hawkins

It's not a photo I've seen before. — Paula Hawkins

I'm almost at the station, just passing the Crown, when I feel a hand on my arm and I wheel around, slipping off the pavement and into the road. — Paula Hawkins

I have to find a way of making myself happy, I have to stop looking for happiness elsewhere. It's true, — Paula Hawkins

I quit! I feel so much better, as if anything is possible. I'm free! — Paula Hawkins

He closed his eyes so that he didn't have to watch me choke. — Paula Hawkins

The holes in your life are permanent. You have to grow around them, like tree roots around concrete; you mould yourself through the gaps. — Paula Hawkins

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

I need to find something that I must do, something undeniable. — Paula Hawkins

You know you can't believe half the stuff they print in the newspapers. — Paula Hawkins

What does it feel like, Anna, to live in my house, surrounded by the furniture I bought, to sleep in the bed that I shared with him for years, to feed your child at the kitchen table he fucked me on? — Paula Hawkins

Blood starts to ooze from the wound. The girls on the other side of the carriage are watching me, their faces blank. — Paula Hawkins

I didn't want to draw attention to her resting place, but I couldn't leave her without remembrance. — Paula Hawkins

There's nothing so painful, so corrosive, as suspicion. — Paula Hawkins

Anything was possible. When you hear hooves you look for horses, but you can't discount zebras. — Paula Hawkins

I've always thought that it might be fun to be Catholic, to be able to go to the confessional and unburden yourself and have someone tell you that they forgive you, to take all the sin away, wipe the slate clean. — Paula Hawkins

I grew up in Zimbabwe in Southern Africa, and I moved to London when I was 17. And I started commuting and, actually, to go to college. And I used to really enjoy that part of my journey where the - it was actually a Tube train, but it was over ground, and it went right past the backs of people's houses, and I could actually see right in. — Paula Hawkins

I feel like myself - the myself I used to be. — Paula Hawkins

It broke me and I broke us. — Paula Hawkins

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

...I never meant for it to go anywhere, I didn't want it to go anywhere. I just enjoyed feeling wanted; I liked the feeling of control. It was as simple and stupid as that. I didn't want him to leave his wife; I just wanted him to 'want' to leave her. To want me that much.

I don't remember when I started believing that it could be more, that we should be more, that we were right for each other. But the moment I did, I could feel him start to pull away. — Paula Hawkins

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

Every time I think I'm about to seize the moment, it drifts back into the shadows, just beyond my reach. — Paula Hawkins

Who was it said that following your heart is a good thing? It is pure egotism, a selfishness to conquer all. — Paula Hawkins

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

LIFE IS NOT A PARAGRAPH. I think about the bundle of clothes on the side of the track and I feel as though my throat is closing up. Life is not a paragraph, and death is no parenthesis. EVENING — Paula Hawkins

She must be very secure in herself, I suppose, in them, for it not to bother her, to walk where another woman has walked before. She obviously doesn't think of me as a threat. I think about Ted Hughes, moving Assia Wevill into the home he'd shared with Plath, of her wearing Sylvia's clothes, brushing her hair with the same brush. I want to ring Anna up and remind her that Assia ended up with her head in the oven, just like Sylvia did. — Paula Hawkins

She has her fingers curled tightly around his forefinger and I have hold of her perfect pink foot, and I feel as though fireworks are going off in my chest. It's impossible, this much love. — Paula Hawkins

I felt isolated in my misery. I became lonely, so I drank a bit, and then a bit more, and then I became lonelier, because no one likes being around a drunk. I lost and I drank and I drank and I lost. — Paula Hawkins

There can be no greater agony, nothing can be more painful than the not knowing, which will never end. — Paula Hawkins

I once read a book by a former alcoholic where she described giving oral sex to two different men, men she'd just met in a restaurant on a busy London high street. I read it and thought, I'm not that bad. This is where the bar is set. — Paula Hawkins

I realized I do tragedy better than comedy. — Paula Hawkins

I'm not even that upset about the rejection any more. What bothers me most is that I haven't got to the end of my story, and I can't start over with someone else, it's too hard. — Paula Hawkins

I've been the fool. If he does it with you, he'll do it to you. — Paula Hawkins

It must take the most incredible self-control, that stillness, that passivity; it must be exhausting. — Paula Hawkins

those dogs, the unwanted ones that have been mistreated all their lives. You can kick them and kick them, but they'll still come back to you, cringing and wagging their tails. Begging. Hoping — Paula Hawkins

I can't blame this all for my drinking -- I can't blame my parents or my childhood, and abusive uncle or some terrible tragedy. It's my fault. I was a drinker anyway -- 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. — Paula Hawkins

One of the lovely things about writing when nobody knows who you are is there's no expectation. — Paula Hawkins

...if you want someone badly enough, morals (and certainly professionalism) don't come into it. You'll do anything to have them. — Paula Hawkins

You can do fascinating things with the tricks memory can play and tell. People can come to believe things which didn't happen at all if they're told them enough times. — Paula Hawkins

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. — Paula Hawkins

I lay there and I thought of what that teacher said, and of all the things I'd been: child, rebellious teenager, runaway, whore, lover, bad mother, bad wife. I'm not sure if I can remake myself as a good wife, but a good mother - that I have to try. — Paula Hawkins

I am interested in the ordinary sort of threat. I know that people are interested in things like serial killers and what have you, but actually, those aren't the sort of crimes that really happen very much. The sort of crimes that happen tend to be more of a domestic nature and quite banal, but the psychology behind them is always fascinating. — Paula Hawkins