Louise Penny Quotes

The reason Armand Gamache could go there was because it wasn't totally foreign to him. He knew it because he’d seen his own burned terrain, he’d walked off the familiar and comfortable path inside his own head and heart and seen what festered in the dark. And one day Jean Guy Beauvoir would look at his own monsters, and then be able to recognize others. And maybe this was the day and this was the case. He hoped so.
Louise Penny
Do you know why we’re all happy here, monsieur? Because it’s the last house on the road.
Louise Penny
There are generally three parties to child abuse: the abused, the abuser and the bystander.
Louise Penny
Our lives are like a house. Some people are allowed on the lawn, some onto the porch, some get into the vestibule or the kitchen. The better friends are invited deeper into our home, into our living room.''And some are let into the bedroom,' said Gamache.
Louise Penny
…while men and women perished, and cities fell, symbols endured, grew. Symbols were immortal.
Louise Penny
Beauvoir was quiet, watching the Chief, taking in the gleam in his eye, the enthusiasm as he described what he'd found. Not the physical landscape, but the emotional. The intellectual.Many might have thought the Chief Inspector was a hunter. He tracked down killers. But Jean Guy knew he wasn't that. Chief Inspector Gama he was an explorer by nature. He was never happier than when he was pushing the boundaries, exploring the internal terrain. Areas even the person themselves hadn't explored. Had never examined. Probably because it was too scary.
Louise Penny
In winter the very ground seemed to reach up and grab the elderly, yanking them to earth as though hungry for them.
Louise Penny
He'd shoved his toque and mitts into the sleeve of his parka when he'd come in the night before, and now, thrusting his right arm into the armhole, he hit the blockage. At a practiced shove the pompom of the toque crowned the cuff followed by his mitts, like a tiny birth.
Louise Penny
Her voice was flat, in a way Myrna recognized from years of listening to people trying to rein in their emotions. To squash them down, flatten, them, and with them their words and their voices. Desperately trying to make the horrific sound mundane.
Louise Penny
Do you know the sums that I do?” “I count my blessings.
Louise Penny
Conscience. Imagine being pursued by your own conscience….A mountain of conscience. Throwing a lengthening shadow. Growing. Darkening.
Louise Penny
Shakespeare: …the best way to peace is to have a still and quiet conscience. Or none at all, thought Gamache.
Louise Penny
Don't mistake dramatics for a conscience.
Louise Penny
After more than a thousand years," he continued, "an enemy finally broke through. Not because of superior firepower. Not because the Manchus were better fighters or strategists. They weren't. The Manchus breached the Great Wall and took Beijing because someone opened a gate. From the inside. As simple as that. A general, a traitor, let them in and an empire fell.
Louise Penny
I respect people who have such passion. Emile was saying. "I don't. I have a lot of interests, some I'm passionate about, but not to the exclusion of everything else. I sometimes wonder if that's necessary for geniuses to accomplish what they must, a singularity of purpose. We mere mortals just get in the way. Relationships are messy, distra
Louise Penny
We have a solemn pact.' Kaye nodded to Mother and looked over at Em talking to some neighbors. 'If one of us is unconscious in the hospital, the others will make sure it's pulled.''The plug?' Ruth asked.'The chin hair,' said Kaye, eyeing Ruth with some alarm. 'You're off the visitors list. Mother, make a note.
Louise Penny
Gamache watched the old poet. He knew what was looming behind the Mountain. What crushed all before it. The thing the Hermit most feared. The Mountain most feared.Conscience....Which is why, Gamache knew, it was vital to be aware of actions in the present. Because the present became the past, and the past grew. And got up, and followed you.And found you ...Who wouldn't be afraid of this?
Louise Penny
…the most devastating thing Finney could have said. Not that Peter was hated by his father. But that he’d been loved all along. He’d interpreted kindness as cruelty, generosity as meanness, support as tethers. How horrible to have been offered love, and to have chosen hate instead. He’d turned heaven into hell.
Louise Penny
Houses are like people, Agent Lemieux. They have secrets. I'll tell you something I've learned.'Armand Gamache dropped his voice so that Agent Lemieux had to strain to hear.'Do you know what makes us sick, Agent Lemieux?'Lemieux shook his head. Then out of the darkness and stillness he heard the answer.'It's our secrets that make us sick.
Louise Penny
You weren't lost. You were exploring. There's a difference.
Louise Penny
…believing sarcasm and rude remarks kept the monsters at bay. They didn’t.
Louise Penny
A murder was never about brawn, it began and ended in the brain and the brain could justify anything.
Louise Penny
Rules meant order. Without them they’d be killing each other. It began with butting in, with parking in disabled spaces, with smoking in elevators. And it ended in murder.
Louise Penny
The bistro was his secret weapon in tracking down murderers. Not just in Three Pines, but in every town and village in Quebec. First he found a comfortable café or brasserie, or bistro, then he found the murderer. Because Armand Gamache knew something many of his colleagues never figured out. Murder was deeply human, the murdered and the murderer. To describe the murderer as a monstrosity, a grotesque, was to give him an unfair advantage. No. Murderers were human, and at the root of each murder was an emotion. Warped, no doubt. Twisted and ugly. But an emotion. And one so powerful it had driven a man to make a ghost.Gamache's job was to collect the evidence, but also to collect the emotions. And the only way he knew to do that was do get to know the people. To watch and listen. To pay attention, and the best way to do that was in a deceptively casual way in a deceptively casual setting.Like the bistro.
Louise Penny
I saw a lot of men die there. Most men. Do you know what killed them?”…”Despair,” said Finney. “They believed themselves to be prisoners. I lived with those men, ate the same maggot-infested food, slept in the same beds, did the same back-breaking work. But they died and I lived. Do you know why?” “You were free.” “I was free. Milton was right…the mind is its own place. I was never a prisoner. Not then, not now.
Louise Penny
When Olivier had been taken away Gamache had sat back down and stared at the sack. what could be worse than Chaos, Despair, War?What would even the Mountain flee from? Gamache had given it a lot of thought.What haunted people even, perhaps especially, on their deathbed? What chased them, tortured them and brought some of them to their knees? And Gamache thought he had the answer.Regret. Regret for things said, for things done, and not done. Regret for the people they might have been. And failed to be.Finally, when he was alone, the Chief Inspector had opened the sack and looking inside had realize he'd been wrong. The worst thing of all wasn't regret.
Louise Penny
Life is change. If you aren't growing and evolving, you're standing still, and the rest of the world is surging ahead.
Louise Penny
. .his cell phone didn't work in Three Pines, and neither did email. He almost expected to see messages fluttering back and forth in the sky above the village, unable to descend.
Louise Penny
She taught me that life goes on, and that I had a choice. To lament what I no longer had or be grateful for what remained.
Louise Penny
Wait, Armand, he heard behind him but kept walking, ignoring the calls. Then he remembered what Emile had meant to him and still did. Did this one bad thing wipe everything else out?That was the danger. Not that betrayals happened, not that cruel things happened, but that they could outweigh all the good. That we could forget the good and only remember the bad.But not today. Gamache stopped.
Louise Penny
Life is choice. All day, everyday. Who we talk to, where we sit, what we say, how we say it. And our lives become defined by our choices. It's as simple and as complex as that. And as powerful. so when I'm observing that's what I'm watching for. The choices people make
Louise Penny
They were home. He always felt a bit like a snail, but instead of carrying his home on his back, he carried it in his arms.
Louise Penny
Photos sat on the piano and shelves bulged with books, testament to a life well lived.
Louise Penny
Homes, Gamache knew, were a self portrait. A person's choice of color, furnishing, pictures, every touch revealed the individual. God, or the devil, was in the details. And so was the human. Was it dirty, messy, obsessively clean? Were the decorations chosen to impress, or were they a hodgepodge of personal history? Was the space cluttered or clear? He felt a thrill every time he entered a home during an investigation.
Louise Penny
But you knew what would happen. Why would you choose to walk right into a situation where you know the person is going to be hurtful? It kills me to see you do that, and you do it all the time. It's like a form of insanity. - Peter MorrowYou call it insanity, I call it optimism. - Clara Morrow
Louise Penny
We're all blessed and we're all blighted, Chief Inspector," said Finney. "Everyday each of us does our sums. The question is, what do we count?
Louise Penny
I often think we should have tattooed on the back of whatever hand we use to shoot or write, 'I might be wrong.
Louise Penny
Murder was deeply human. A person was killed and a person killed. And what powered the final thrust wasn't a whim, wasn't an event. It was an emotion. Something once healthy and human had become wretched and bloated and finally buried. But not put to rest. It lay there, often for decades, feeding on itself, growing and gnawing, grim and full of grievance. Until it finally broke free of all human restraint. Not conscience, not fear, not social convention could contain it. When that happened, all hell broke loose. And a man became a monster.
Louise Penny
Gamache nodded. It was what made his job so fascinating, and so difficult. How the same person could be both kind and cruel, compassionate and wretched. Unraveling a murder was more about getting to know the people than the evidence. People who were contrary and contradictory, and who often didn't even know themselves.
Louise Penny
The fault lies with us, and only us. It's not fate, not genetics, not bad luck, and it's definitely not Mom and Dad. Ultimately it's us and our choices...but the most powerful spectacular thing is that the solution rests with us as well.
Louise Penny
But we don't have to react. That's what I'm saying. A police force, like a government, should be above that. Just because we're provoked doesn't mean we have to act. -- Still Life
Louise Penny
As the boys screamed and hauled off handfuls of mulch, Olivier had slowly, deliberately, gently taken Gabri’s hand and held it before gracefully lifting it to his lips. The boys had watched, momentarily stunned, as Olivier had kissed Gabri’s manure-stained hand with his manure-stained lips. The boys had seemed petrified by this act of love and defiance. But just for a moment. Their hatred triumphed and soon their attack had re-doubled.
Louise Penny
To be silent. In hopes of not offending, in hopes of being accepted. But what happened to people who never spoke, never raised their voices? Kept everything inside?Gamache knew what happened. Everything they swallowed, every word, thought, feeling rattled around inside, hollowing the person out. And into that chasm they stuffed their words, their rage.
Louise Penny
They stared ahead. Silent. Morin had never realized murderers were caught in silence. But they were.
Louise Penny
Don't be so sure," said Gamache. "It's a little humbling to realize the pedestal isn't quite so high after all."Brebeuf chuckled. "Welcome to earth, Armand. It's a little dirty down here.
Louise Penny
Maybe this was now normal for Olivier. Maybe every now and then he simply wept. Not in pain or sadness. The tears were just overwhelming memories, rendered into water, seeping out.
Louise Penny
She’d forgotten to love, but she also forgot to hate. (about Clara’s mother, who had dementia)
Louise Penny
What killed people wasn't a bullet, a blade, a fist to the face. What killed people was a feeling. Left too long. Sometimes in the cold, frozen. Sometimes buried and fetid. And sometimes on the shores of a lake, isolated. Left to grow old, and odd.
Louise Penny
They spoke in semaphore, all punctuation unnecessary.“You?”“Great.”They’d trimmed the language to its essentials. Before long it would just be consonants. Then silence.
Louise Penny
I just sit where I'm put, composedof stone and wishful thinking:that the deity who kills for pleasurewill also heal,that in the midst of your nightmare,the final one, a kind lionwill come with bandages in her mouthand the soft body of a woman,and lick you clean of fever, and pick your soul up gently by the nape of the neckand caress you into darkness and paradise.
Louise Penny
Jesus, is Gamache hiring fetuses now?
Louise Penny
And Beauvoir knew then the man was a saint. He's been touched by any number of medical men and women. All healers, all well intentioned, some kind, some rough. All made it clear they wanted him to live, but none had made him feel that his life was precious, was worth saving, was worth something.
Louise Penny
Life is choice. All day, every day. Who we talk to, where we sit, what we say, how we say it. And our lives become defined by our choices. It's as simple and as complex as that. And as powerful. So when I'm observing, that's what I'm watching for. The choices people make.
Louise Penny
Not everything buried is actually dead. For many, the past is alive.
Louise Penny
The only thing money really buys?...Space. A bigger house, a bigger car, a larger hotel room. First-class plane tickets. But it doesn't even buy comfort. No one complains more than the rich and entitled. Comfort, security, ease. None of them come with money.
Louise Penny
Beauvoir left their home wanting to call his wife and tell her how much he loved her, and then tell her what he believed in, and his fears and hopes and disappointments. To talk about something real and meaningful. He dialed his cell phone and got her. But the words got caught somewhere south of his throat. Instead he told her the weather had cleared, and she told him about the movie she'd rented. Then they both hung up.
Louise Penny
…in the library…surrounded by things far more dangerous than what roamed the school corridors. For here thoughts were housed.
Louise Penny
I've been treating you with courtesy and respect because that's the way I choose to treat everyone. But never, ever mistake kindness with weakness.
Louise Penny
That was why she was happy. He now knew that happiness ad kindness went together. There was not one without the other. For Jean-Guy it was a struggle. For Annie it seemed natural.
Louise Penny
She knew that kindness kills. All her life she'd suspected this and so she'd only ever been cold and cruel. She'd faced kindness with cutting remarks. She'd curled her lips at smiling faces. She'd twisted every thoughtful, considerate act into an assault. Everyone who was nice to her, who was compassionate and loving, she rebuffed.Because she'd loved them. Loved them with all her heart, and wouldn't see them hurt. Because she'd known all her life that the surest way to hurt someone, to maim and cripple them, was to be kind. If people were exposed, they die. Best to teach them to be armored, even if it meant she herself was forever alone. Sealed off from human touch.
Louise Penny