Quotes from Louise Penny

Not everything buried is actually dead. For many, the past is alive.

Grief was dagger-shaped and sharp and pointed inward. It was made of fresh loss and old sorrow. Rendered and forged and sometimes polished. Irene Finney had taken her daughter's death and to that sorrow she'd added a long life of entitlement and disappointment, of privilege and pride. And the dagger she'd fashioned was taking a brief break from slashing her insides, and was now pointed outward.

it's not the truth about others that will set you free, but the truth about yourself.

All will be as it should, if we just do our best.

the pain of neuralgia…she knew what they thought. That she was cold. Couldn't feel. But in fact she felt too much. Too deeply.

What's the use of healing, if the life that's saved is callow and selfish and ruled by fear? There's a difference between being in sanctuary and being in hiding.

Funny how imperfections on the outside mean something splendid beneath.

I think you might try leading your life as though it's just you. If he comes back and you know your life will be better with him, then great. But you'll also know you're enough on your own.

To live in chaos was to live in a prison. Order freed the mind for other things.

There are generally three parties to child abuse: the abused, the abuser and the bystander.

His heart filled his chest and ran to the end of his tail and the very tips of his considerable ears. It filled his head, squeezing out his brain. But Henri, the foundling, was a humanist, and while not particularly clever was the smartest creature Gamache knew. Everything he knew he knew by heart.

But he also knew praying was more to steady the person than inform the deity.

He was an emotional communist. Everyone counted equally, but none too much.

Houses are like people, Agent Lemieux. They have secrets. I'll tell you something I've learned.' Armand Gamache dropped his voice so that Agent Lemieux had to strain to hear. 'Do you know what makes us sick, Agent Lemieux?' Lemieux shook his head. Then out of the darkness and stillness he heard the answer. 'It's our secrets that make us sick.

There is a balm in Gilead," she read from the back, "to make the wounded whole—" "There's power enough in Heaven / To cure a sin-sick soul.

But sometimes that comfort was an illusion. Masquerading as protecting, while actually imprisoning.

There seems such a fine line between falling into place and falling apart.

It's about what happens when gullibility and fear meet greed and power.

You can tell a lot about a man by his friends, or lack of them. Do they bring out the best in each other, or are they always gossiping, tearing others down? Keeping wounds alive?

Not everyone's an explorer, and not every explorer makes it back alive. That's why it takes so much courage.

Most people want to be led. But suppose they choose the wrong leader? They end up with the Donner party.

The fault is here, but so is the solution. That's the grace.

We choose our thoughts. We choose our perceptions. We choose our attitudes

Rules meant order. Without them they'd be killing each other. It began with butting in, with parking in disabled spaces, with smoking in elevators. And it ended in murder.