The Girl on the Train Quotes

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

“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.”

“I have never understood how people can blithely disregard the damage they do by following their hearts.”

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

“The last thing I need is rest. I need to find something to fill my days. I know what’s going to happen if I don’t.”

“I close my eyes and let the darkness grow and spread until it morphs from a feeling of sadness into something worse: a memory, a flashback.”

“After a while, I learned that when you wake up like that, you don’t ask what happened, you just say that you’re sorry: you’re sorry for what you did and who you are and you’re never, ever going to behave like that again.”

“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.”

“I can’t risk looking backwards, it’s always a bad idea.”

“There are familiar faces on these trains, people I see every week, going to and fro. I recognize them and they probably recognize me. I don’t know whether they see me, though, for what I really am.”

“Let’s be honest: women are still only really valued for two things—their looks and their role as mothers.”

“I woke feverish, panicky. Guilty. I do feel guilty. Just not guilty enough.”

“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.”

“It’s impossible to resist the kindness of strangers.”

“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. I don’t even miss working.”

“Drunk Rachel sees no consequences, she is either excessively expansive and optimistic or wrapped up in hate. She has no past, no future. She exists purely in the moment.”

“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.”

“This is what marriage is—safe, warm, comfortable.”

“If I turned right here I’d go up past my gallery—what was my gallery, now a vacant shop window—but I don’t want to, because that still hurts a little.”

“I never learn. I wake with a crushing sensation of wrongness, of shame, and I know immediately that I’ve done something stupid.”