I think many people love their problems. Gives them all sorts of excuses for not growing up and getting on with life. - Louise Penny

They were cunning,deceitful,arrogant and nearly incomprehensible,especially the Anglos. They were dangerous because they hid their thoughts,hid their feelings behind a smiling face. Who could tell what was really going on in their heads? They said one thing and thought another. Who knew what rancid thing lived ,curled up,in the space between words and thoughts.

And yet,’ Gamache continued in a pleasant voice, ‘isn’t that what’s often taught in meditation? Not the absence of emotion, or swallowing them, but not allowing them to run the show?

In my teens my drug of choice was acceptance, in my twenties it was approval, in my thirties it was love, in my forties it was Scotch. That lasted a while,’ she admitted. ‘Now all I really crave is a good bowel movement.