Key Insights & Memorable Quotes
Below are the most popular and impactful highlights and quotes from The Woman in Cabin 10:
“My friend Erin says we all have demons inside us, voices that whisper we're no good, that if we don't make this promotion or ace that exam we'll reveal to the world exactly what kind of worthless sacks of skin and sinew we really are Maybe that's true. Maybe mine just have louder voices.”
“There’s a reason why we keep thoughts inside our heads for the most part—they’re not safe to be let out in public.”
“Maybe that was closer to the truth--we weren't captor and captive, but two animals in different compartments of the same cage. Hers was just slightly larger.”
“There’s no reason, on paper at least, why I need these pills to get through life. I had a great childhood, loving parents, the whole package. I wasn’t beaten, abused, or expected to get nothing but As. I had nothing but love and support, but that wasn’t enough somehow. My friend Erin says we all have demons inside us, voices that whisper we’re no good, that if we don’t make this promotion or ace that exam we’ll reveal to the world exactly what kind of worthless sacks of skin and sinew we really are. Maybe that’s true. Maybe mine just have louder voices. But I don’t think it’s as simple as that. The depression I fell into after university wasn’t about exams and self-worth, it was something stranger, more chemical, something that no talking cure was going to fix. Cognitive behavioral therapy, counseling, psychotherapy—none of it really worked in the way that the pills did. Lissie says she finds the notion of chemically rebalancing your mood scary, she says it’s the idea of taking something that could alter how she really is. But I don’t see it that way; for me it’s like wearing makeup—not a disguise, but a way of making myself more how I really am, less raw. The best me I can be.”
“we all have demons inside us, voices that whisper we’re no good, that if we don’t make this promotion or ace that exam we’ll reveal to the world exactly what kind of worthless sacks of skin and sinew we really are.”
“There was a little spritz of sequined leaves across the right shoulder because you didn’t seem to be able to get away with none. Apparently the majority of ball gowns were designed by five-year-old girls armed with glitter guns, but at least this one didn’t look entirely like an explosion in a Barbie factory.”
“I jumped to a conclusion that was so wrong, it was almost completely right.”
“I love ports. I love the smell of tar and sea air, and the scream of the gulls. Maybe it's years of taking the ferry to France for summer holidays, but a harbor gives me a feeling of freedom in a way that an airport never does. Airports say work and security checks and delays. Ports say... I don't know. Something completely different. Escape, maybe.”
“I know what it's like. Don't you see? I know what she must have felt like, when someone came for her in the middle of the night. That's why I have to find out who did this to her.”
“It didn’t help that, unlike a ferry, there were no floor plans or maps, and minimal signage – supposed to help the impression that this was a private home that you just happened to share with a load of rich people.”
“I would never sleep. I knew that. Not with my blood ringing in my ears, and my heart beating an angry staccato rhythm in my chest. I would never relax.”
“Was this what it was going to be like? Was I turning into someone who had panic attacks about walking home from the tube or staying the night alone in the house without their boyfriend? No, fuck that. I would not be that person.”
“Tina is one of those women who thinks every bit of estrogen in the boardroom is a threat to her own existence.”
“Apparently the majority of ball gowns were designed by five-year-old girls armed with glitter guns, but at least this one didn’t look entirely like an explosion in a Barbie factory. I”
“Its size, along with the perfection of its paintwork, gave it a curiously toylike quality, and as I stepped onto the narrow steel gangway I had a sudden disorienting image of the Aurora as a ship imprisoned in a bottle – tiny, perfect, isolated, and unreal – and of myself, shrinking down to match it with every step I took towards the boat.”
“Yes. Yes, I take antidepressants. So what? No”
“she had made her way up the corporate ladder by treading on the backs of more young women than you could count, and then, once she was through the glass ceiling, pulling the ladder up behind her. I remembered Rowan once saying, Tina is one of those women who thinks every bit of estrogen in the boardroom is a threat to her own existence.”
“What was going to happen to me? There were only two possibilities—they were going to let me go at some point. Or they were going to kill me.”
“And even in spite of my ovaries, I can remember a simple two-digit number.”
“STOP DIGGING.' The letters on the mirror were etched in my memory. Now, as I finished my make-up with a swipe of lip-gloss, I huffed on the mirror, and wrote in the steam obscuring my reflection one word: 'NO'.”
“There was genuine hurt in his voice, but I refused to let myself soften. It had been Ben’s favorite tactic in arguments, when we were together, to divert the discussion away from whatever was annoying me to the fact that I’d hurt his feelings and was acting irrationally. Time and again I’d ended up apologizing for the fact that I’d upset him—my own feelings completely ignored, and always, in the process, we’d somehow wound up losing sight of the issue that had provoked the disagreement in the first place. I wasn’t falling for it now.”
“I choose not to think about these images,” I muttered. “I choose to think about . . .” And then I stopped. What? What? None of Barry’s tutorials had focused on what happy images to choose when you were being held prisoner by a murderer. Was I supposed to think about my mum? About Judah? About everything I loved and held dear and was about to lose? “Insert happy image here, you little fucker,” I whispered, but the place I was inserting it probably wasn’t the one Barry had in mind.”
“Very well. May I offer you a glass of champagne?” She indicated a tray on a small table by the entrance, and I nodded and took a frosted flute. I knew I should keep a clear head for tomorrow, but one glass for Dutch courage couldn’t hurt”
“But I was almost certain—almost completely certain—that she was the woman in cabin 10.”
“For a travel journalist I’m worryingly bad at geography.”
“Thank you, everyone, for coming to join us here on the Aurora on this, its maiden voyage,” he began.”
“It's totally alien to me — as you know, I live for travel. I can't imagine confining yourself to a petty little country like Norway when the restaurants and capitals of the world await.”
“I knew what it was like to be that girl — to realize in an instant, how incredibly fragile your hold on life could be, how paper-thin the walls of security really were.”
“But I’d seen this kind of willful blindness before, women who insisted their boyfriends weren’t cheating in the face of all the evidence, people working for horrendous employers who’d persuaded themselves they were just following orders and doing what was necessary. There seemed to be no limit to the capacity of people to believe what they wanted to see...”
“Anon, I have no idea who you are and to be honest you can fuck off. Yes, Lo takes medication (although FYI it’s for anxiety, not depression and if you were really a friend of hers you’d know that) but so do literally hundreds of thousands of people, and the idea that that automatically makes her either “unstable” as you put it, or suicidal, is fucking offensive.”
