Quotes from Louise Penny

There's more, but I won't go on. It's a poem by Rupert Brooke. He was a soldier in the First World War. It helped him in the hellhole of the trenches to think of the things he loved. It helped me too. I made mental lists and followed the things I love, the people I love, back to sanity. I still do.

If less was more, she had a great deal.

in the library…surrounded by things far more dangerous than what roamed the school corridors. For here thoughts were housed.

Nature, she knew, abhorred a vacuum, and these people, faced with an information vacuum, had filled it with their fears.

She felt if she could just get a good look at a person's bookcase and their grocery cart, she'd pretty much know who they were.

Your brain is your weapon.

I saw a lot of men die there. Most men. Do you know what killed them?"…"Despair," said Finney. "They believed themselves to be prisoners. I lived with those men, ate the same maggot-infested food, slept in the same beds, did the same back-breaking work. But they died and I lived. Do you know why?" "You were free." "I was free. Milton was right…the mind is its own place. I was never a prisoner. Not then, not now.

You're lying on your deathbed. You have one hour to live. Who is it, exactly, you have needed all these years to forgive?

Violent death demanded Earl Grey.

Why do decent young men and women become bullies? Why do soldiers dream of being heroes but end up abusing prisoners and shooting civilians? Why do politicians become corrupt? Why do cops beat suspects senseless and break the laws they're meant to protect?

But odd as his family might be, they were nothing compared to this. In fact, that was one of the great comforts of his job. At least his family compared well to people who actually killed each other, rather than just thought about it.

Her voice was flat, in a way Myrna recognized from years of listening to people trying to rein in their emotions. To squash them down, flatten, them, and with them their words and their voices. Desperately trying to make the horrific sound mundane.

This was the great benefit of seeing worse. Fewer things worried him now.

All the mistakes I've made have been because I've assumed something and then acted as though it was fact. Very dangerous, Agent Lemieux. Believe me. I wonder if you haven't already leaped to a false conclusion?

Fear lives in the head. And courage lives in the heart. The job is to get from one to the other.

How did you know He was God?' Gamache asked. 'When does a bush that burns become a Burning Bush?' Em asked and Gamache nodded. 'My despair disappeared. The grief remained, of course, but I knew then that the world wasn't a dark and desperate place. I was so relieved. In that moment I found hope. This strnager with the sign had given it to me. It sounds ridiculous, I know, but suddenly the gloom was lifted.' She paused a moment, remembering, a smile on her face.

It would be folly to trust the instincts of a baby. But it would also be a mistake to completely dismiss them.

He walked over the arched stone bridge, enjoying the silence of the village. Snow did that. It laid down a simple, clean duvet that muffled all sound and kept everything beneath alive. Farmers and gardeners in Quebec wished for two things in winter: lots of snow and continuous cold. An early thaw was a disaster. It tricked the young and vulnerable into exposing themselves, only to be nipped in the root. A killing frost.

How do your poems start out?" "They start as a lump in the throat," she said. "Isn't that normally just a cocktail olive lodged there?" Olivier asked. "Once," Ruth admitted. "Wrote quite a good poem before I coughed it up.

Ruth Zardo. A gifted poet. One of the most distinguished in the nation. But that gift had come wrapped in more than a dollop of crazy.

The near enemy. It's a psychological concept. Two emotions that look the same but are actually opposites. The one parades as the other, is mistaken for the other, but one is healthy and the other's sick, twisted.

Where once his grandparents put up crucifixes and images of the benediction on their walls, he and Reine-Marie put up books on theirs. History books. Reference books. Biographies. Fiction, nonfiction. Stories lined the walls and both insulated them from the outside world and connected them to it.

Maybe that's what old men are for. To make decisions that no young man can." He was watching Gamache closely. "Or should have to.

Patience. Patience. With patience comes choice, and with choice comes power.