Quotes from Louise Penny

They don't teach this at medical school, but I've seen it in real life. People dying 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.

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.

It was funny how obsessed people believed others equally obsessed, or even interested.

She suspected if they looked in Gamache's bedside table, they'd find all sorts of lost souls he put there for safekeeping. And maybe a baguette.

Our lives are like a house. Some people are allowed on the lawn, some onto the porch, some get into the vestibule or kitchen. The better friends are invited deeper into our home, into our living room.

Anyone could be clever. Anyone could be smart. Anyone could be taught. But not everyone was kind." Chapter 1 · Page 10 · Location 202

Next morning Jean-Guy Beauvoir was waiting by the car with two travel mugs of café au lait from the bistro and two chocolatines. "Just because we're going to Mordor doesn't mean we can't enjoy ourselves on the way," he said, opening the passenger-side door for Armand.

emotions were far from linear. They were circles and waves and dots and triangles. But they were rarely a straight line." Chapter 13 · Page 114 · Location 2031

A therapist has to have clear boundaries, even with former clients. People already get into our heads—if they also get into our lives, there's a problem.

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.

He remembered how it felt to find himself in the library, away from possible attack but surrounded by things far more dangerous than what roamed the school corridors. For here thoughts were housed.

Corruption and brutality are modeled and expected and rewarded. It becomes normal. And anyone who stands up to it, who tells them it's wrong, is beaten down. Or worse.

We don't just sing; we are the song.

If you don't know something, ask. You have to be able to admit you don't know something, otherwise you'll just get more and more confused, or worse, you'll jump to a false conclusion. All the mistakes I've made have been because I've assumed something and then acted as though it was fact.

When a woman commits to something she does it with both her heart and her head. Very powerful.

C. S. Lewis wrote that we can create situations in which we are happy, but we cannot create joy. It just happens.

After all, it's how the light gets in.

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 more loneliness.

If you pretend to know you aren't going to actually learn.

Control your thoughts and you can control your emotions. Do you trust me?

And she knew that that was why drugs were so dangerous. Because they blew the mind. Not the heart. But the mind. And the heart followed. And the soul followed that.

All children are sad, but some get over it.

Yes, facts were necessary. But frankly, anyone could be trained to collect a bloodstain or find a hair. Or an affair. Or a bank balance that didn't balance. But feelings? Only the bravest wandered into that fiery realm.

The shepherd looked in his direction. Gone to the wrong house, thought Gamache, not altogether surprised. While Henri had a huge heart, he had quite a modest brain. His head was taken up almost entirely by his ears. In fact, his head seemed simply a sort of mount for those ears. Fortunately Henri didn't really need his head. He kept all the important things in his heart.