Louise Penny Quotes

Life is change. If you aren't growing and evolving you're standing still, and the rest of the world is surging ahead. Most of these people are very immature; they lead still lives, waiting.

Waiting for what?

Waiting for someone to save them. Expecting someone to save them, or at least protect them from the big bad world. The thing is no one else can save them because the problem is theirs, and so is the solution. Only they can get out of it.

When senior officers start shooting each other, it’s time to leave,” said Gamache. “I’m sure it’s somewhere in the regulations.

The four sayings that lead to wisdom:
I was wrong
I'm sorry
I don't know
I need help

Ring the bells that still can ring, Forget your perfect offering, There’s a crack in everything, That’s how the light gets in.’ ‘What an extraordinary poem. Ruth Zardo?’ ‘Leonard Cohen. Clara used it in her piece. She wrote it on the wall behind the three of you, like graffiti.

You didn’t just lose a loved one. You lost your heart, your memories, your laughter, your brain and it even took your bones. Eventually it all came back, but different. Rearranged.

So that over time, clever became cunning. Dynamic became obsessed. Ambitious became ruthless.

His heart filled his chest and ran to the end of his tail and the very tips of his considerable ears. It filled his head, squeezing out his brain. But Henri, the foundling, was a humanist, and while not particularly clever was the smartest creature Gamache knew. Everything he knew he knew by heart.

There is always a road back. If we have the courage to look for it, and take it. I'm sorry. I was wrong. I don't know. I need help. These are the signposts. The cardinal directions.

I’ll pray that you grow up a brave man in a brave country. I will pray you find a way to be useful.

His theory is that life is loss,’ said Myrna after a moment. ‘Loss of parents, loss of loves, loss of jobs. So we have to find a higher meaning in our lives than these things and people. Otherwise we’ll lose ourselves.

Happiness as an act of defiance. A revolutionary act.

Who hurt you, once,
so far beyond repair
that you would meet each overture
with curling lip?
While we, who knew you well,
your friends, (the focus of your scorn)
could see your courage in the face of fear,
your wit, and thoughtfulness,
and will remember you
with something close to love.

It's a blessing Madame Gamache and I had at our wedding. It was read at the end of the ceremony.

Now you will feel no rain
For each of you will be shelter for the other
Now you will feel no cold
For each of you will be warmth for the other
Now there is no loneliness for you
Now there is no more loneliness.
Now you are two persons, but there is one life before you.
Go now to your dwelling place
To enter into the days of your togetherness.
And may your days be good and long upon this earth.

(Apache Blessing)

Beauvoir knew that the root of all evil wasn’t money. No, what created and drove evil was fear. Fear of not having enough money, enough food, enough land, enough power, enough security, enough love. Fear of not getting what you want, or losing what you have.

No. It was almost impossible to electrocute someone these days, unless you were the governor of Texas.