Quotes from Louise Penny

That was why she was happy. He now knew that happiness and kindness went together. There was not one without the other. For Jean-Guy it was a struggle. For Annie it seemed natural.

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

When were these seeds of anger sown / And on what ground.

Gamache listened closely. To the words. The tone. The space between the words.

Ha, she thought, he gets it. He'd given her one of the key statements in response. She quickly went through the other statements, the ones that lead to promotion. I forget, I'm sorry, I need help and what was the other one? 'I don't know.

Homes, Gamache knew, were a self-portrait. A person's choice of color, furnishing, pictures. Every touch revealed the individual. God, or the Devil, was in the details. And so was the human.

like buzz bombs in the Blitz.

I mean some can predict the future because they create it," said Rosenblatt. "Oh, not the good things. We can't make someone love us, or even like us. But we can make someone hate us. We can't guarantee we'll be hired for a job, but we can make sure we're fired." He put down his apple cider and stared at Gamache. "We can't be sure we'll win a war, but we can lose one.

The lines of his face were the longitude and latitude of his life. The

A Scotch, please, Marie,' said Ruth, suddenly deflating and sinking back into the chair. 'I'm sorry. Forgive me.' She sounded to Gamache like someone used to apologising. 'I suppose I could blame Jane's death for my poor behavior, but as you'll discover, I'm just like this. I have no talent for choosing my battles. Life seems, strangely, like a battle to me. The whole thing.

How intimating became intimidating. It was subtle, and all the more powerful for it.

You don't want to go into your head alone, mon petit. It's a very scary place.' The

crevices. There was a noise in his

Montreal, boasted its share of piles, built by the Scottish robber barons, of railway, booze and banking money. They were held together with hubris, a short-term binder at best since many of them had long ago been torn down or donated to McGill University, which needed another Victorian monstrosity like it needed the Ebola virus.

It was one of life's little mysteries that this woman she had absolutely no respect for, could lay her flat.

And the enemy you'll be fighting is yourself.

At Christmas homes were full of the people there and people not there.

It smelled of the past, of a time before computers, before information was "Googled" and "blogged." Before laptops and BlackBerries and all the other tools that

Nothing I ever gave was good for you,' quoted Gamache. 'It was like white bread to a goldfish.' Beside him Ruth Zardo stiffened, then in a low growl she finished her own poem. 'They cram and cram, and it kills them, and they drift in the pool, belly up, making stunned faces and playing on our guilt as if their own toxic gluttony was not their fault.

All I'd inherit would be outrage. I don't want that. For me or my family.

But what she really should have been afraid of was words, ideas. Amelia knew that. 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.

With patience comes choice, and with choice comes power." The words

Give bad news swiftly, and spread out the good news. Machiavelli.

Terrible things were discussed by confident people in public places.