The Cabin Quotes

“There’s no replacing those whom you’ve lost, those who have been taken too soon. But you can still live.”
― Jasinda Wilder, The Cabin

“The art to living is hard to learn, there’s grief and loss and sorrow and pain, but there’s also joy and fulfillment and meaning, and you can’t have one without the other. The pain makes joy more potent, I think. It doesn’t mean you seek the pain or want it or like it, but when you find the joy after the pain has healed, you understand more fully that the dawn of redemption only comes after the long night of sorrow has passed.”
― Jasinda Wilder, The Cabin

“It’s a story about moving on. About finding love after loss. It’s me asking the question, how do you move on when your heart’s true love has died? And then attempting to answer that question.”
― Jasinda Wilder, The Cabin

“It’s a lie that these people exist, that this story is real, or even possible. The happily ever after carries on after you’ve read those words: The End. You, the reader, come to me begging for that lie. You relish it. That lie provides you with comfort, with entertainment, with emotions your real life may lack. You know exactly what I’m doing, but like any accomplished magician, you don’t know how I do it. Even the above explanation doesn’t show you how I tell my lies, or how I perform the magic, the sleight of hand, the prestidigitation which turns ideas in my brain into real people on the page.”
― Jasinda Wilder, The Cabin

“But first. Oh, first. This. I dip at the knees. She grasps me. Feeds me into her, and I stand up, fill her. She whimpers my name”
― Jasinda Wilder, The Cabin

“I lie for a living—that’s all fiction is, after all, when you drill down to the molten core of it: I, the writer, create in my mind a pair of characters, two people who did not heretofore exist, and I strive to make them seem real. I give them backstories. I give them foibles and flaws. Scars, peccadilloes, fetishes. Like you, like me. Then I come up with a way to force them into orbit around each other. This is the plot—the path of their orbits as they intersect, creating a necessary collision. The collision results in not destruction as in true astronomy, but creation. This collision is where the magic happens. It’s the real lie. It’s a lie that these people exist, that this story is real, or even possible. The happily ever after carries on after you’ve read those words: The End. You, the reader, come to me begging for that lie. You relish it. That lie provides you with comfort, with entertainment, with emotions your real life may lack. You know exactly what I’m doing, but like any accomplished magician, you don’t know how I do it.”
― Jasinda Wilder, The Cabin

“I love you more than fucking life itself, Nadia. Never forget that. Wherever…wherever I’m going, I’ll love you there too.”
― Jasinda Wilder, The Cabin

“The art to living is hard to learn, there’s grief and loss and sorrow and pain, but there’s also joy and fulfillment and meaning, and you can’t have one without the other.”
― Jasinda Wilder, The Cabin

“And that was what made me panic. That feeling of being okay. It felt like I was betraying Adrian by not clutching my grief to my chest and hoarding it and stockpiling it and counting it like Scrooge McDuck with his vault of gold coins.”
― Jasinda Wilder, The Cabin

“To hold another’s hand. To let him into my heart, into my world. To put my body at his mercy. How do I do that again?”
― Jasinda Wilder, The Cabin

“It’s fine. How about we have a rule that we will not feel bad, embarrassed, or awkward if we happen to make a comment like that. It’s part of our lives, part of who we are, and there’s no point dancing around it.”
― Jasinda Wilder, The Cabin

“Beware—it’s dark in here, close to my heart, near my soul. The curtains are drawn, and sheets cover the furniture. Dust inhabits the corners. Ghosts moan in the halls. Are you sure you want me to let you in?”
― Jasinda Wilder, The Cabin

“You won’t actually die from how bad it hurts, even if it feels like you could, even if, in the midst of it, you almost want to.”
― Jasinda Wilder, The Cabin

“I’m learning that waking up and missing Adrian is just part of living, not the entirety of me.”
― Jasinda Wilder, The Cabin

“Now, you know better. Now, you know it can be taken away. Tennyson can go to hell, right? “Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” Go to hell. You don’t know shit, Alfred.”
― Jasinda Wilder, The Cabin

“I hurt, all over. Grief and anger are physical. I can taste them. Feel them in the tension in my shoulders. Relax? Ha. I have to think about breathing. Each breath, I have to tell myself to suck it in, and let it out. Take another breath. Keep breathing.”
― Jasinda Wilder, The Cabin

“God help me, I’m so angry. I’ve been avoiding and denying that anger for so long, now. The anger is there, simmering, boiling under the surface, and I’ve been ignoring it. It’s why I can’t sleep. Why I can’t eat—I have no appetite, and when I do eat, food is tasteless.”
― Jasinda Wilder, The Cabin

“But really, I’m watching her. She’s uncomfortable just sitting there, doing nothing. She crosses and uncrosses her legs. Sips too fast, then sets it down as if to slow herself down. Rakes her hand through her hair, then realizes she’s fidgeting, and tries to still herself again. I want to tell her she’s trying too hard to relax. It won’t come right away, the ability to slow down. If you try to force it, you’ll just stress yourself out even worse. For a go-go-go type of person, like me, like Lisa was, it takes some practice. I think, too, she’s just too sad to be able to enjoy anything. And that, now, that I get.”
― Jasinda Wilder, The Cabin

“It’s weird to even think that. I haven’t really noticed women, not for years. I tried, too. But it just went…nowhere. I couldn’t make my heart less of an ice block, couldn’t make my brain interested, nor my body. It’s like I just shut down when Lisa died, and not all the systems came up online again.”
― Jasinda Wilder, The Cabin

“Now, the interest is due on that grief. It’s come collecting, and it has no mercy. This kind of sorrow is utterly savage. It’s the army that razes the city to the ground, raping and killing everyone within, but doesn’t stop there. It burns the wreckage, and then salts the earth where the city once stood. I’ve burned through the alcohol—my misery is entirely sober, now.”
― Jasinda Wilder, The Cabin

“Imagine, or remember if you’re that unfortunate, crying so hard every bone rattles inside your skin. Crying so hard you wonder if you’ve gone literally blind, because the salt of the river of tears has seared away your eyes. Crying so hard your chest feels like it’s clamped in a white-hot vise. Then multiply that by a thousand.”
― Jasinda Wilder, The Cabin

“People talk jokingly about having a breakdown, but unless they’ve really experienced it, they don’t know.”
― Jasinda Wilder, The Cabin

“And maybe, if you can hold on a little longer, if you can try to trade hope for despair, you’ll find something beyond the sorrow.”
― Jasinda Wilder, The Cabin

“If we meet in heaven and you have spent the rest of your life alone, I shall be angry with you, my love.”
― Jasinda Wilder, The Cabin

“It’s a lie that these people exist, that this story is real, or even possible. The happily ever after carries on after you’ve read those words: The End. You, the reader, come to me begging for that lie. You relish it.”
― Jasinda Wilder, The Cabin

“He wasn’t just my husband, he was my best friend and…he…he knew me inside out. He knew everything. He saw me, all of me, all there is. And now he’s gone and everyone is gone and I’m so fucking lonely.”
― Jasinda Wilder, The Cabin

“But the question which drives you onward resounds deafeningly, tolling like a bell in the tremoring depths of your little boy soul: Would it be worth it? Is SHE worth it? Only one way to find out: Jump.”
― Jasinda Wilder, The Cabin

“Always, forever, no matter what. Anything, everything, always.”
― Jasinda Wilder, The Cabin

“The only diamond I own is the one on my finger, the one you put there the day you proposed. It’s the only diamond I want.”
― Jasinda Wilder, The Cabin

“The art to living is hard to learn, there’s grief and loss and sorrow and pain, but there’s also joy and fulfillment and meaning, and you can’t have one without the other. The pain makes joy more potent, I think. It doesn’t mean you seek the pain or want it or like it, but when you find the joy after the pain has healed, you understand more fully that the dawn of redemption only comes after the long night of sorrow has passed.”
― Jasinda Wilder, The Cabin