“Beware a calm surface—you never know what lies beneath.”
― Paula Hawkins, quote from Into the Water
“Yes, it is. It’s, like, when someone has an affair, why does the wife always hate the other woman? Why doesn’t she hate her husband? He’s the one who’s betrayed her, he’s the one who swore to love her and keep her and whatever forever and ever. Why isn’t he the one who gets shoved off a fucking cliff?”
― Paula Hawkins, quote from Into the Water
“The things I want to remember I can't, and the things I try so hard to forget just keep coming.”
― Paula Hawkins, quote from Into the Water
“No one liked to think about the fact that the water in that river was infected with the blood and bile of persecuted women, unhappy women; they drank it every day.”
― Paula Hawkins, quote from Into the Water
“She felt it when she woke, not a presence but an absence.”
― Paula Hawkins, quote from Into the Water
“She had never realized before her life was torn apart how awkward grief was, how inconvenient for everyone with whom the mourner came into contact. At first it was acknowledged and respected and deferred to. But after a while it got in the way—of conversation, of laughter, of normal life.”
― Paula Hawkins, quote from Into the Water
“Imagine walking past the place where you lost someone, every single day.”
― Paula Hawkins, quote from Into the Water
“Anything was possible. When you hear hooves you look for horses, but you can’t discount zebras.”
― Paula Hawkins, quote from Into the Water
“But then I suppose I’ve never really lost anyone. How would I know what that kind of grief feels like?”
― Paula Hawkins, quote from Into the Water
“Lena's voice grew cold. "I don't understand you. I don't understand people like you, who always choose to blame the woman. If there's two people doing something wrong and one of them's a girl, it's got to be her fault, right?”
― Paula Hawkins, quote from Into the Water
“The river can go back over the past and bring it all up and spit it out on the banks in full view of everyone, but people can’t.”
― Paula Hawkins, quote from Into the Water
“Watching someone in the throes of raw grief is a terrible thing; the act of watching feels violent, intrusive, a violation. Yet we do it, we have to do it, all the time; you just have to learn to cope with it whatever way you can.”
― Paula Hawkins, quote from Into the Water
“Beckford is not a suicide spot. Beckford is a place to get rid of troublesome women.”
― Paula Hawkins, quote from Into the Water
“You stung me like that often; cruelty always was your strong suit.”
― Paula Hawkins, quote from Into the Water
“they never saw what the water really was, greenish-black and filled with living things and dying things. Out”
― Paula Hawkins, quote from Into the Water
“She used to think that only parents can understand the sort of love that swallows you up, but now she wondered whether it was only mothers who did.”
― Paula Hawkins, quote from Into the Water
“We now know that memories are not fixed or frozen, like Proust’s jars of preserves in a larder, but are transformed, disassembled, reassembled, and recategorized with every act of recollection.”
― Paula Hawkins, quote from Into the Water
“We tell our stories differently, don't we, you and I?”
― Paula Hawkins, quote from Into the Water
“the horrors conjured up by the mind are always so much worse than what is.”
― Paula Hawkins, quote from Into the Water
“Some say the women left something of themselves in the water; some say it retains some of their power, for ever since then it has drawn to its shores the unlucky, the desperate, the unhappy, the lost. They come here to swim with their sisters.”
― Paula Hawkins, quote from Into the Water
“You were never the princess, you were never the passive beauty waiting for a prince, you were something else. You sided with darkness, with the wicked stepmother, the bad fairy, the witch.”
― Paula Hawkins, quote from Into the Water
“In between them stood an elephant and she felt she ought to point it out.”
― Paula Hawkins, quote from Into the Water
“...the past shooting out at me like sparrows for the hedgerow, startling and inescapable.”
― Paula Hawkins, quote from Into the Water
“All this guilt, this doubt, it was corrosive. It was changing her, twisting her. She was not the woman she used to be. She could feel herself slipping, slithering as though she were shedding a skin, and she didn’t like the rawness underneath, she didn’t like the smell of it. It made her feel vulnerable, it made her feel afraid.”
― Paula Hawkins, quote from Into the Water
“We now know that memories are not fixed or frozen, like Proust’s jars of preserves in a larder, but are transformed, disassembled, reassembled, and recategorized with every act of recollection. —Oliver Sacks, Hallucinations”
― Paula Hawkins, quote from Into the Water
“As histórias dos adultos eram cheias de crueldades idiotas: criancinhas impedidas de entrar na escola porque tinham a cor de pele errada, gente surrada ou morta por adorar o deus errado.”
― Paula Hawkins, quote from Into the Water
“There are people who are drawn to water, who retain some vestigial primal sense of where it flows. I believe that I am one of them. I am most alive when I am near the water, when I am near this water. This is the place where I learned to swim, the place where I learned to inhabit nature and my body in the most joyous and pleasurable way.”
― Paula Hawkins, quote from Into the Water
“But the thing people don’t seem to realize is that I don’t want to not feel like this. How can I not feel like this? My sadness feels right. It … weighs the right amount, crushes me just enough.”
― Paula Hawkins, quote from Into the Water
“¿Cómo es que puedo recordar con semejante perfección las cosas que me sucedieron cuando tenía ocho años y, en cambio, me resulta imposible recordar si he hablado o no con mis colegas sobre el cambio de fecha de la evaluación de un cliente? Las cosas que quiero recordar se me olvidan, y las que intento olvidar no dejan de acudir a mi mente.”
― Paula Hawkins, quote from Into the Water
“I was running along the coastal path, clasping Mum's bracelet to my wrist. I was terrified that it was going to drop off and go sliding down the cliff into the sea. I wanted to put it in my mouth for safekeeping, like crocodiles do with their babies.”
― Paula Hawkins, quote from Into the Water
Paula Hawkins
Born place: Zimbabwe
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“Come on, Barbie. Please. Do it for your favorite cupcake.”
― Gena Showalter, quote from The Queen of Zombie Hearts
“Why did everyone like that story so much when it wasn't true? Why was everyone so eager to believe it? Was it because, in real life, ever after's generally stink?”
― Margaret Peterson Haddix, quote from Just Ella
“I listened long to your story,
Listened but could not hear.
When you chose to walk that path so overgrown,
I remained alone with my fear.
Cold silence covers the distance,
Stretches from shore to shore.
I follow in my mind your far-off journeying,
But I will walk that path no more.”
― Anne Elisabeth Stengl, quote from Heartless
“On Saturday afternoons I used to go for a walk with my mother. From the dusk of the hallway, we stepped at once into the brightness of the day. The passerby, bathed in melting gold, had their eyes half-closed against the glare, as if they were drenched with honey, upper lips were drawn back, exposing the teeth. Everyone in this golden day wore that grimace of heat–as if the sun had forced his worshippers to wear identical masks of gold. The old and the young, women and children, greeted each other with these masks, painted on their faces with thick gold paint; they smiled at each other's pagan faces–the barbaric smiles of Bacchus.”
― Bruno Schulz, quote from The Street of Crocodiles
“I tell my seven-year-old son about his remarkable forefathers. I leave out the bloody details. (For him these people are like knights, which sounds better than hangmen or executioners.) In his bedroom hangs a collage made up of photos of long-dead family members--great-grandparents, great-great-grandparents, their aunts, their uncles, their nephews and nieces..Sometimes at night he wants to hear stories about these people, and I tell him what I know about them. Happy stories, sad stories, frightening stories. For him the family is a safe refuge, a link binding him to many people whom he loves and who love him. I once heard that everyone on this earth is at least distantly related to everyone else. Somehow this is a comforting idea.”
― Oliver Pötzsch, quote from The Hangman's Daughter
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Scott Pilgrim, Volum...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
