The best quotes by the author we have brought to you
“A tiding of magpies: One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy, five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret never to be told” (The Girl on the Train Quotes)
Paula Hawkins
The Girl on the Train
“And I’ve just got to let myself feel the pain, because if I don’t, if I keep numbing it, it’ll never really go away.”
Paula Hawkins
The Girl on the Train
“Beautiful sunshine, cloudless skies, no one to play with, nothing to do. Living like this, the way I’m living at the moment, is harder in the summer when there is so much daylight, so little cover of darkness, when everyone is out and about, being flagrantly, aggressively happy. It’s exhausting, and it makes you feel bad if you’re not joining in.”
Paula Hawkins
The Girl on the Train
“But I did become sadder, and sadness gets boring after a while, for the sad person and for everyone around them.”
Paula Hawkins
The Girl on the Train
“Hollowness: that I understand. I’m starting to believe that there isn’t anything you can do to fix it. That’s what I’ve taken from the therapy sessions: the holes in your life are permanent. You have to grow around them, like tree roots around concrete; you mold yourself through the gaps”
Paula Hawkins
The Girl on the Train
“How much better life must have been for jealous drunks before emails and texts and mobile phones, before all this electronica and the traces it leaves.”
Paula Hawkins
The Girl on the Train
“I am not the girl I used to be. I am no longer desirable, I’m off-putting in some way. It’s not just that I’ve put on weight, or that my face is puffy from the drinking and the lack of sleep; it’s as if people can see the damage written all over me, can see it in my face, the way I hold myself, the way I move.”
Paula Hawkins
The Girl on the Train
“I can’t do this, I can’t just be a wife. I don’t understand how anyone does it – there is literally nothing to do but wait. Wait for a man to come home and love you. Either that or look around for something to distract you.”
Paula Hawkins
The Girl on the Train
“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
The Girl on the Train
“I have lost control over everything, even the places in my head.”
Paula Hawkins
The Girl on the Train
“I have never understood how people can blithely disregard the damage they do by following their hearts. Who was it said that following your heart is a good thing? It is pure egotism, a selfishness to conquer all.”
Paula Hawkins
The Girl on the Train
“I have to find a way of making myself happy, I have to stop looking for happiness elsewhere. It’s true,”
Paula Hawkins
The Girl on the Train
“I miss being a mistress. I enjoyed it. I loved it, in fact. I never felt guilty. I pretended I did. 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
The Girl on the Train
“I want to drag knives over my skin, just to feel something other than shame, but I’m not even brave enough for that”
Paula Hawkins
The Girl on the Train
“If you want someone badly enough, morals (and certainly professionalism) don’t come into it. You’ll do anything to have them.”
Paula Hawkins
The Girl on the Train
“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
The Girl on the Train
“It’s possible to miss what you’ve never had, to mourn for it.”
Paula Hawkins
The Girl on the Train
“It’s impossible to resist the kindness of strangers.”
Paula Hawkins
The Girl on the Train
“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
The Girl on the Train
“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
The Girl on the Train
“I’ve been up for hours; I can’t sleep. I haven’t slept in days. I hate this, hate insomnia more than anything, just lying there, brain going round, tick, tick, tick, tick.”
Paula Hawkins
The Girl on the Train
“Let’s be honest: women are still only really valued for two things – their looks and their role as mothers. I’m not beautiful, and I can’t have kids, so what does that make me? Worthless.”
Paula Hawkins
The Girl on the Train
“Life is not a paragraph, and death is no parenthesis.”
Paula Hawkins
The Girl on the Train
“My mother used to tell me that I had an overactive imagination; Tom said that, too. I can’t help it, I catch sight of these discarded scraps, a dirty T-shirt or a lonesome shoe, and all I can think of is the other shoe and the feet that fitted into them.”
Paula Hawkins
The Girl on the Train
“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
The Girl on the Train
“People you have a history with, they won’t let you go, and as hard as you might try, you can’t disentangle yourself, can’t set yourself free. Maybe after a while you just stop trying.”
Paula Hawkins
The Girl on the Train
“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
The Girl on the Train
“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
The Girl on the Train
“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
The Girl on the Train
“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
The Girl on the Train
“The workings of other people’s families are always so impenetrable.”
Paula Hawkins
The Girl on the Train
“There was a time when I had willpower, when I could run 10k before breakfast and subsist for weeks on thirteen hundred calories a day. 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
The Girl on the Train
“There’s something comforting about the sight of strangers safe at home.”
Paula Hawkins
The Girl on the Train
“Well, there are therapists who believe that hypnosis can be used to recover repressed memories, but it’s very controversial. I don’t do it, nor do I recommend it to my patients. I’m not convinced that it helps, and in some instances I think it can be harmful. I’m sorry. I know this isn’t what you want to hear. But with the mind, I think, there are no quick fixes.”
Paula Hawkins
The Girl on the Train
“You’re like one of 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 that this time it’ll be different, that this time they’ll do something right and you’ll love them. You’re just like that, aren’t you, Rich? You’re a dog.”
Paula Hawkins
The Girl on the Train
