Paula Hawkins

“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.”

“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.”

“I'm well aware that there is no job more important than that of raising a child, but the problem is that it isn't valued.”

“When I write, I imagine places more than people.”

“The first Amy Silver book was commissioned, and they were not books that came completely from me. They weren't necessarily the sort of books I read, and although I enjoyed doing them very much, and they were great training, I never felt completely comfortable in that genre.”

“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”

“Women become invisible as they age; men become impotent.”