The Girl On The Train

“I’d rather be here, looking out at the houses beside the track, than almost anywhere else.”

This is an early example of train symbolism in the novel. Before Megan’s death, Rachel is comforted by the view from her train window. Riding the train gives her a sense of belonging after discovering she is infertile, being divorced by an abusive husband, and losing her job because of her alcohol use disorder.

“Life is not a paragraph, and death is no parenthesis.”

From the train, Rachel sees the first part of this sentence as graffiti on the side of a building. She dwells on how it describes life and adds the idea about death. Death is not just an aside, she thinks, but a more central part of life.

“Runaway, lover, wife, waitress, gallery manager, nanny, and a few more in between. So who do I want to be tomorrow?”

Here, Megan considers her different occupations and relationships—the roles she’s taken on in the past—and her capacity to change in the future. Later in the novel, shortly before her murder, Megan supplies another list, but one that focuses on relationships, specifically how she desires to take on the role of good mother in the future, as opposed to being a bad mother in the past. This earlier quote gives more context about her working life.