The Girl On The Train

50 Quotes About Beautifully Broken Women From 'The Girl On The Train'

I'm not normal.
Holly Riordan
September 28, 2016
“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
Tagged: Scars, Pain, Moving On
“I have never understood how people can blithely disregard the damage they do by following their hearts.”
— Paula Hawkins, The Girl On The Train
Tagged: Hearts, Damage, careless
“There’s something comforting about the sight of strangers safe at home.”
— Paula Hawkins, The Girl On The Train
Tagged: Comfort, Strangers, Safe
“I have lost control over everything, even the places in my head.”
— Paula Hawkins, The Girl On The Train
Tagged: Control, insane, Head
“It’s possible to miss what you’ve never had, to mourn for it.”
— Paula Hawkins, The Girl On The Train
Tagged: Missing, Mourning, possibilities
“There’s nothing so painful, so corrosive, as suspicion.”
— Paula Hawkins, The Girl On The Train
Tagged: Pain, suspicion, damaging
“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
Tagged: Waiting, Patience, Marriage, wives
“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
Tagged: strength, Life, Pain
“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
Tagged: Pain, coward, self-harm
“Sadness gets boring after a while, for the sad person and for everyone around them.”
— Paula Hawkins, The Girl On The Train
Tagged: Sad, Depression, Boring
“Let’s be honest: women are still only really valued for two things—their looks and their role as mothers.”
— Paula Hawkins, The Girl On The Train
Tagged: Women, Value, mothers, beauty
“I’m playing at real life instead of actually living it.”
— Paula Hawkins, The Girl On The Train
Tagged: pretending, Life, Living
“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
Tagged: History, Escape, humanity
“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
Tagged: Pain, Numb, Feeling
“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
Tagged: Hearts, Ego, Selfish
“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
Tagged: unattractive, Alcoholic, damaged
“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
Tagged: hugs, Pain, Alone
“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
Tagged: Weather, sunny, exhausting
“He’s a master at it, making me feel as though everything is my fault, making me feel worthless.”
— Paula Hawkins, The Girl On The Train
Tagged: Worthless, depressed, Dating
“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, The Girl On The Train
Tagged: depressed, Suffering, Questions
“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.”
— Paula Hawkins, The Girl On The Train
Tagged: Escape, Running Away, moving
“No matter how much I love him, it won't be enough.”
— Paula Hawkins, The Girl On The Train
Tagged: Love, Dating, inadequate
“I’d never realized, not until the last year or two of my life, how shaming it is to be pitied.”
— Paula Hawkins, The Girl On The Train
Tagged: Shame, Pity, embarrassing
“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
Tagged: indoors, hermit, homebody
“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, The Girl On The Train
Tagged: Shame, Embarrassment, witnesses
“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
Tagged: alcoholics, Drunk, Jealous, drunk texts
“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.”
— Paula Hawkins, The Girl On The Train
Tagged: Dogs, mistreated, Hope, Begging
“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, The Girl On The Train
Tagged: soulmate, Understanding, broken
“I might never have the courage to say the words out loud, I might lose them altogether, they might stick in my throat and choke me in my sleep.”
— Paula Hawkins, The Girl On The Train
Tagged: Courage, Words, Speaking
“Nobody warned me it would break us. But it did. Or rather, it broke me, and then I broke us.”
— Paula Hawkins, The Girl On The Train
Tagged: broken, Break Up, damaged