240 Quotes by Paula Hawkins

Certainly, there is a tendency to lump women who write similar types of books together, and it's not just in crime, is it? Women's fiction is supposedly a whole genre of itself. There's no male equivalent.

When I write, I imagine places more than people.

I don't have a partner, so I take care of the mortgage by myself, and I was thinking, 'Oh God, I'm going to have to sell the house or find a new career.' I was not in a good place, but it was a real spur to get 'The Girl on the Train' right. I had to nail it and do it really well. It really concentrates the mind, that kind of thing.

'The Woman on the Train' just didn't sound as good. I'll take care next time not to have 'girl' in the title.

I spent a lot of time writing about tax and pensions and mortgages.

I'm not naturally an extrovert. I'm a writer - I sit in a room by myself making things up. That is where I'm happiest.

Women become invisible as they age; men become impotent.

I wrote four novels under the name Amy Silver. The first one was commissioned, and I was given basically the whole plot and the characters. They told me what to do, and I went straight away and did it. After that, I continued, and I was coming up with more my own ideas, although they did steer me.

Having something commissioned made it easier for me to share my work and see it out there and have people read it without feeling like there was a piece of my soul on the page.