Quotes from Louise Penny

He often said that words told them what someone was thinking, but the tone told them how they felt.

I asked him to leave because he stopped caring for me, stopped supporting me. Not because I'd stopped caring for him.

Good hearts get hurt. Good hearts get broken, Armand. And then they lash out.

But he realized Henri already knew all he'd ever need. He knew he was loved and he knew how to love.

You need to remember that, Jean-Guy. The blindness you mention isn't believing in the essential goodness of people, it's failing to see it.

Before laptops and BlackBerries and all the other tools that mistook information for knowledge. It was an old library, filled with old books and dusty old thoughts.

Do you know, Armand, I can't remember the last time I felt safe." "I know what you mean," said Gamache. "It feels as though this has been going on forever." "No, I don't mean just this mess. I mean all my life.

What is essential is invisible to the eye. Knowledge, ideas, thoughts. Imagination. All invisible. All lived in libraries. But

And fear. High school smelled of that more than anything else, even more than sweaty feet, cheap perfume and rotten bananas.

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.

He was tired of the tyranny of the greater good.

You're catastrophizing, allowing fear into the driver's seat. You're reacting to things that haven't happened and behaving as though they have, or are inevitable. Focus on what is actually happening, here and now." "Surrender to reality," he said with a small grin and, grabbing a tissue, he rubbed his eyes. It was one of Hardye Moel's favorite sayings. "Yes. Stop fighting battles that don't exist. Focus on what does.

They don't teach this at medical school, but I've seen it in real life. People die in bits and pieces. A series of petites morts. Little deaths. They lose their sight, their hearing, their independence. Those are the physical ones. But there're others. Less obvious, but more fatal. They lose heart. They lose hope. They lose faith. They lose interest. And finally, they lose themselves.

Peter's a lucky man except in one respect, he doesn't seem to know how lucky he is.

Olivier looked at him blankly. But the Chief Inspector had seen that look before. It was, in fact, almost impossible to look blank. Unless the person wanted to. A blank face to the Chief Inspector meant a frantic mind.

when people died, they didn't go away. They were very much alive in the minds, in the hearts, in the vivid memories of those left behind. And they were not always easy to live with. Some ghosts had demands.

She'd wanted to run an inn. To welcome people, to mother them. They had no children of their own, and she had a powerful need to nurture.

He was drawn to the edge of things. To the places old mariners knew, and warned, "Beyond here be monsters."… He stepped into the beyond, and found the monsters hidden deep inside all the reasonable, gentle, laughing people. He went where even they were afraid to go.

Dreadful deeds were obvious. The divine was often harder to see.

believing sarcasm and rude remarks kept the monsters at bay. They didn't.

It was a careworn face. But most of the lines, if followed back like a trail, would lead to happiness. To the faces a face made when laughing or smiling, or sitting quietly enjoying the day. Though some of those lines led elsewhere. Into a wilderness, into the wild. Where terrible things had happened. Some of the lines of his face led to events inhuman and abominable. To horrific sights. To unspeakable acts. Some of them his. The lines of his face were the longitude and latitude of his life.

Until the Quiet Revolution gave women back their bodies and Quebeckers back their lives. It invited the church to leave the womb and restrict itself to the altar. It almost worked.

Homes, Gamache knew, were a self-portrait. A person's choice of color, furnishing, pictures.

Sometimes life goes in a direction not of our choosing. That's why we need to adapt. It's never too late o change direction… [Gamache] knew the young minister was wrong, sometimes it was too late.