Quotes from Louise Penny

Now he had her full attention. Not only because she wanted to know what had happened, but because anyone who'd get up at two in the morning to smack a melon in the dark deserved attention. Perhaps even medical attention.

She was stuffing her innards back. Sewing herself up, putting her skin, her make-up, her party frock back on.

That was why she was happy. He now knew that happiness and kindness went together. There was not one without the other.

history wasn't just written by the victors. First it had to be erased and rewritten. Replacing troublesome truth with self-serving myth.

Oscar Wilde said that conscience and cowardice are the same thing. What stops us from doing horrible things isn't our conscience but the fear of getting caught.

There's a huge fucking missile launcher in our backyard and apparently the only thing between us and Armageddon is some guy who's afraid of a duck.

A lot of what we know to be history isn't…it serves a purpose. Events are exaggerated, heroes fabricated, goals are rewritten to appear more noble than they actually were. All to manipulate public opinion, to manufacture a common purpose or enemy. And the cornerstone of a really great movement? A powerful symbol. Take away or tarnish that and everything starts to crumble, everything's questioned.

You weren't lost. You were exploring. There's a difference.

The world turned upside down,' Beauvoir continued. 'It was at once more beautiful and more frightening than you'd been led to believe. And suddenly you didn't know what to do. Who to trust. Where to turn. It's terrifying. Being lost is so much worse than being on the wrong road. That's why people stay on it for so long.

Plenty of time for a close friendship to turn to hate. As only a good friendship could. The conduit to the heart was already created.

There is always a road back. If we have the courage to look for it, and take it.

There was nothing like the pain of the present to cure the pain of the past.

Look at Nuremberg. Why did the Holocaust happen?" "Because deluded, power-crazy leaders needed a common enemy," said Clara. "No," said Myrna. "It happened because no one stopped them. Not enough people stood up soon enough.

I don't know what came over me. It's like sometimes when it's very quiet I feel like screaming. And sometimes when I'm holding something delicate I feel like dropping it. I don't know why.

He'd seen it in others, the consequences of failing to choose companions wisely. One slightly immoral person was a problem. Two together was a catastrophe. All it took was a fateful meeting. A person who told you your meanest desires, your basest thoughts, weren't so bad. In fact, he shared them. Then the unthinkable was thought. And planned for. And put into action.

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

Gabri plugged the oven and the espresso machine into the generator,' explained Olivier. 'No lights, but we have the necessities.

In the kitchen Gamache's German shepherd, Henri, sat up in his bed and cocked his head. He had huge oversized ears which made Gamache think he wasn't purebred but a cross between a shepherd and a satellite dish.

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?

Hell is the truth seen too late," said Reine-Marie as she poured out more coffee. "Thomas Hobbes.

Thinking is an action,

When does a bush that burns become a Burning Bush?

Quote from Louise Penny a Canadian author. Wrote "How The Light Gets In" from an interview. "Having started as a voracious reader (and I still am), I know that reading is as creative as writing. The writer suggests, creates a character, a setting, an atmosphere. But it's the reader who brings it alive. Walks with the characters, sees the world, smells the wood smoke, tastes the café au lait and feels the biting cold on the tender cheek

Henri kept everything important in his heart. He mostly kept cookies in his head.