Quotes from Louise Penny

Marcus Aurelius. The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.

In the kingdom of the blind, Amelia recited to herself as she trudged along— —the one-eyed man is king, Gamache read.

When I miss things or let them pass they gather in a heap then rise up and take a life. So, I try not to.

They'd crossed over to that continent where grieving parents lived. It looked the same as the rest of the world, but wasn't. Colors bled pale. Music was just notes. Books no longer transported or comforted, not fully. Never again. Food was nutrition, little more. Breaths were sighs. And they knew something the rest didn't. They knew how lucky the rest of the world was.

I've been treating you with courtesy and respect because that's the way I choose to treat everyone. But never, ever mistake kindness for weakness.

A coy smile could capture him, but it was finally a hearty laugh that had freed him.

but if you were a nasty piece of work growing up, you'll be an asshole as an adult and you'll die pissed off.

Of all the things we keep inside the worst are secrets. The things we are so ashamed of, so afraid of, we need to hide them even from ourselves. Secrets lead to delusion and delusion leads to lies, and lies create a wall. Our secrets make us sick because they separate us from other people. Keep us alone. Turn us into fearful, angry, bitter people. Turn us against others, and finally against ourselves.

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.

FINE stood for Fucked up, Insecure, Neurotic, and Egotistical.

He inhaled deeply and exhaled the word "people." Not so much an indictment as in wonderment. That there could be so much deliberate cruelty and so much kindness in one species.

It's important, Madeleine, not to cut people out of our lives. Isolation doesn't make us better at our job. It makes us weaker, more vulnerable.

She'd arrived a self-sufficient city woman, and now she was covered in snow, sitting on a bench beside a crazy person, and she had a duck on her lap. Who was nuts now?

Four days. And she had two gay sons, a large black mother, a demented poet for a friend and was considering getting a duck. It was not what she'd expected from this visit.

The glass was old. Leaded. Imperfect. And it was the imperfections that were creating the play of light.

There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supersedes all other courts.

In grief people were themselves and not themselves.

Instead he stood erect, the snow insinuating itself down his collar and up his sleeves, plastering against his face and into his unblinking eyes.

I often think we should have tattooed to the back of whatever hand we use to shoot or write, "I might be wrong.

if love followed them through lifetimes, did hate also follow?

Like a ship changing course. It might take a while to get to port, but at least it was going in the right direction.

Though dour and childless himself, the grocer was unfailingly kind and patient with children. As though instead of having none, he had them all.

Their lives could not be defined by their deaths. They belonged not in perpetual pain but in the beauty of their short lives.

Things were pretty dire when Ruth was the healing agent.