“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, quote from The Girl on the Train
“I have never understood how people can blithely disregard the damage they do by following their hearts.”
― Paula Hawkins, quote from The Girl on the Train
“There’s something comforting about the sight of strangers safe at home.”
― Paula Hawkins, quote from The Girl on the Train
“it’s possible to miss what you’ve never had, to mourn for it.”
― Paula Hawkins, quote from The Girl on the Train
“I have lost control over everything, even the places in my head.”
― Paula Hawkins, quote from 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, quote from The Girl on the Train
“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, quote from The Girl on the Train
“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, quote from The Girl on the Train
“There’s nothing so painful, so corrosive, as suspicion.”
― Paula Hawkins, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from 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.”
― Paula Hawkins, quote from The Girl on the Train
“I’m playing at real life instead of actually living it.”
― Paula Hawkins, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from The Girl on the Train
“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”
― Paula Hawkins, quote from 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, quote from The Girl on the Train
“It's impossible to resist the kindness of strangers.”
― Paula Hawkins, quote from The Girl on the Train
“But then I think, this happens sometimes, doesn’t it? 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, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from The Girl on the Train
“He’s a master at it, making me feel as though everything is my fault, making me feel worthless.”
― Paula Hawkins, quote from The Girl on the Train
“It’s ridiculous, when I think about it. How did I find myself here? I wonder where it started, my decline; I wonder at what point I could have halted it. Where did I take the wrong turn?”
― Paula Hawkins, quote from The Girl on the Train
“It’s impossible to resist the kindness of strangers. Someone who looks at you, who doesn’t know you, who tells you it’s OK, whatever you did, whatever you’ve done: you suffered, you hurt, you deserve forgiveness.”
― Paula Hawkins, quote from The Girl on the Train
“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, quote from The Girl on the Train
“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, quote from The Girl on the Train
“They’re what I lost, they’re everything I want to be.”
― Paula Hawkins, quote from The Girl on the Train
“Who's to say that once I run, I'll find that isn't enough? Who's to say I won't end up feeling exactly the way I do right now-not safe, but stifled? Maybe I'll want to run again, and again, and eventually I'll end up back on those old tracks, because there's nowhere left to go. Maybe. Maybe not. You have to take the risk, don't you”
― Paula Hawkins, quote from The Girl on the Train
Paula Hawkins
Born place: Zimbabwe
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“They's a lot of no-good sonofabitches out there."
Arvin asks, "More than a hundred?"
Willard laughed a little and put the truck in gear. "Yeah, at least that many.”
― Donald Ray Pollock, quote from The Devil All the Time
“Alric! Stop it!" Pickering snapped at him. "You mustn't let the men see you crying!"
Fury flared in Alric, and he spun on the count. "No? No? Look at them! They are dying for me. They are dying on my order! I say they do have a right to see their king! They all have a right to see their king!"
Alric wiped the tears from his cheeks and gathered his reins. "I'm tired of this. I'm tired of having my face put in the dirt! I won't stand it. I'm tired of being helpless. That's my city, built by my ancestors! If my people chose to fight, then, by Maribor, I want them to know it's me they fight!"
The prince put on his helm, drew his father's large sword and spurred his horse forward, not at the trench but at the castle gate itself.”
― Michael J. Sullivan, quote from The Crown Conspiracy
“we are such inward secret creatures, that inwardness the most amazing thing about us, even more amazing than our reason. but we cannot just walk into the cavern and look around. most of what we think we know about our minds is pseudo-knowledge. we are all such shocking poseurs, so good at inflating the importance of what we think we value.”
― Iris Murdoch, quote from The Sea, the Sea
“There is a deeper reason why the café was so precious to this town. And this deeper reason has to do with a certain pride that had not hitherto been known in these parts. To understand this new pride the cheapness of human life must be kept in mind. There were always plenty of people clustered around a mill – but it was seldom that every family had enough meal, garments, and fat back to go the rounds. Life could become one long dim scramble just to get the things needed to keep alive. And the confusing point is this: All useful things have a price, and are bought only with money, as that is the way the world is run. You know without having to reason about it the price of a bale of cotton, or a quart of molasses. But no value has been put on human life; it is given to us free and taken without being paid for. What is it worth? If you look around, at times the value may seem to be little or nothing at all. Often after you have sweated and tried and things are not better for you, there comes a feeling deep down in the soul that you are not worth much.”
― Carson McCullers, quote from The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories
“Love stories are written in millimeters and milliseconds with a fast, dull pencil whose marks you can barely see, they are written in miles and eons with a chisel on the side of a mountiantop”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac
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The Thief's DaughterBookQuoters 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.
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