The Girl on the Train

by Paula Hawkins

There’s something comforting about the sight of strangers safe at home.

Well, I can, I do, I want to, I don’t want to, I try not to.

She makes you notice her niceness. Her niceness is writ large, it is her defining quality and she needs it acknowledged, often, daily almost, which can be tiring.

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

He loves me so much, it makes me ache. I don’t know how he does it. I would drive me mad.

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.

What if the thing I’m looking for can never be found? What if it just isn’t possible?

He never understood that it’s possible to miss what you’ve never had, to mourn for it.

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 mould yourself through the gaps.

I want to drag knives over my skin, just so that I can feel something other than shame, but I’m not even brave enough to do that.

It’s impossible, this much love.

There’s nothing so painful, so corrosive, as suspicion.