Louise Penny > Quotes

“When someone stabs you it's not your fault that you feel pain.”
― Louise Penny, A Fatal Grace

“I was tired of seeing the Graces always depicted as beautiful young things. I think wisdom comes with age and life and pain. And knowing what matters.”
― Louise Penny, A Fatal Grace

“Or - perhaps - I should just worry about my own behavior and let others be who they are.”
― Louise Penny

“But you want murderous feelings? Hang around librarians," confided Gamache. "All that silence. Gives them ideas.”
― Louise Penny, A Rule Against Murder

“Normally death came at night, taking a person in their sleep, stopping their heart or tickling them awake, leading them to the bathroom with a splitting headache before pouncing and flooding their brain with blood. It waits in alleys and metro stops. After the sun goes down plugs are pulled by white-clad guardians and death is invited into an antiseptic room.

But in the country death comes, uninvited, during the day. It takes fishermen in their longboats. It grabs children by the ankles as they swim. In winter it calls them down a slope too steep for their budding skills, and crosses their skies at the tips. It waits along the shore where snow met ice not long ago but now, unseen by sparkling eyes, a little water touches the shore, and the skater makes a circle slightly larger than intended. Death stands in the woods with a bow and arrow at dawn and dusk. And it tugs cars off the road in broad daylight, the tires spinning furiously on ice or snow, or bright autumn leaves. ”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“The leaves had fallen from the trees and lay crisp and crackling beneath his feet. Picking one up he marveled, not for the first time, at the perfection of nature where leaves were most beautiful at the very end of their lives.”
― Louise Penny, The Brutal Telling

“What are you afraid of?
I'm afraid of not recognizing Paradise.”
― Louise Penny, The Brutal Telling

“I'm just like this. I have no talent for choosing my battles. Life seems, strangely, like a battle to me. The whole thing.”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“Don't mistake dramatics for a conscience.”
― Louise Penny, A Fatal Grace

“What haunted people even, perhaps especially, on their deathbed? What chased them, tortured them and brought some of them to their knees? And [he] thought he had the answer. Regret. Regret for things said, things done, and things not done. Regret for the people they might have been. And failed to be. ”
― Louise Penny, The Brutal Telling

“Now here's a good one:
you're lying on your deathbed.
You have one hour to live.
Who is it, exactly, you have needed
all these years to forgive?”
― Louise Penny, A Fatal Grace

“Let every man shovel out his own snow, and the whole city will be passable," said Gamache. Seeing Beauvoir's puzzled expression he added, "Emerson."

"Lake and Palmer?"

"Ralph and Waldo.”
― Louise Penny, A Fatal Grace

“The night is a strawberry.”
― Louise Penny, Bury Your Dead

“Better to accept the wretched truth than struggle, twisting to make a wish a reality.”
― Louise Penny, The Brutal Telling

“I went through a period in my life when I had no friends, when the phone never rang, when I thought I would die from loneliness. I know that the real blessing here isn't that I have a book published, but that I have so many people to thank.”
― Louise Penny

“Every year the hunters shot cows and horses and family pets and each other. And unbelievably, they sometimes shot themselves, perhaps in a psychotic episode where they mistook themselves for dinner”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“Not a spoon clinked against a mug, not a creamer was popped, peeled and opened, not a breath. It was as though something else had joined them then. As though silence had taken a seat.”
― Louise Penny, The Brutal Telling

“But there was no hiding from Conscience. Not in new homes and new cars. In travel. In meditation or frantic activity. In children, in good works. On tiptoes or bended knee. In a big career. Or a small cabin. It would find you. The past always did. Which was why... it was vital to be aware of actions in the present. Because the present became the past, and the past grew. And got up, and followed you. And found you... Who wouldn't be afraid of this?”
― Louise Penny, The Brutal Telling

“Aid workers, when handing out food to starving people, quickly learn that the people fighting for it at the front are the people who need it least. It's the people sitting quietly at the back, too weak to fight, who need it the most. And so too with tragedy.”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“Myrna could spend happy hours browsing bookcases. 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.”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“The bistro was his secret weapon in tracking down murderers. Not just in Three Pines, but in every town and village in Quebec. First he found a comfortable café or brasserie, or bistro, then he found the murderer. Because Armand Gamache knew something many of his colleagues never figured out. Murder was deeply human, the murdered and the murderer. To describe the murderer as a monstrosity, a grotesque, was to give him an unfair advantage. No. Murderers were human, and at the root of each murder was an emotion. Warped, no doubt. Twisted and ugly. But an emotion. And one so powerful it had driven a man to make a ghost.

Gamache's job was to collect the evidence, but also to collect the emotions. And the only way he knew to do that was do get to know the people. To watch and listen. To pay attention, and the best way to do that was in a deceptively casual way in a deceptively casual setting.

Like the bistro.”
― Louise Penny, A Fatal Grace

“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.”
― Louise Penny

“To remain conscious and continent was her new goal.”
― Louise Penny

“People wandered in for books and conversation. They brought their stories to her, some bound, and some known by heart. She recognized some of the stories as real, and some as fiction. But she honored them all, though she didn't buy every one.”
― Louise Penny, The Brutal Telling

“He had loads of colleagues, acquaintances, buddies. He was an emotional communist. Everyone counted equally, but none too much.”
― Louise Penny, The Brutal Telling

“Being with Ken was like being with a permanently foreign friend. It was impossible to understand them, but all you really needed to do was reflect back their own expressions. When Ken looked sad, they looked sad. When he looked happy, they smiled. It was actually very relaxing to be around him. Not much was expected.”
― Louise Penny, Bury Your Dead

“She picked up her book and tried to read but it was heavy in her hands. She struggled to hold it, wanting to finish the story, wanting to know how it ended. She was afraid she'd run out of time before she ran out of book.”
― Louise Penny, A Fatal Grace

“That was the danger. Not that betrayals happened, not that cruel things happened, but that they could outweigh all the good. That we could forget the good and only remember the bad.”
― Louise Penny, Bury Your Dead

“Clara shrugged and immediately knew her betrayal of Peter. In one easy movement she'd distanced herself from his bad behavior, even thought she herself was responsible for it. Just before everyone had arrived, she'd told Peter about her adventure with Gamache. Animated and excited she'd gabbled on about her box and the woods and the exhilarating climb up the ladder to the blind. But her wall of words hid from her a growing quietude. She failed to notice his silence, his distance, until it was too late and he'd retreated all the way to his icy island. She hated that place. From it he stood and stared, judged, and lobbed shards of sarcasm.

'You and your hero solve Jane's death?'

'I thought you'd be pleased,' she half lied. She actually hadn't thought at all, and if she had, she probably could have predicted his reaction. But since he was comfortably on his Inuk island, she'd retreat to hers, equipped with righteous indignation and warmed by moral certitude. She threw great logs of 'I'm right, you're an unfeeling bastard' onto the fire and felt secure and comforted.”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“We're all blessed and we're all blighted, Chief Inspector," said Finney. "Everyday each of us does our sums. The question is, what do we count?”
― Louise Penny, A Rule Against Murder

“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.”
― Louise Penny, A Fatal Grace

“I don't know what came over me. It's like sometimes when it's very quiet I feel like screaming. And sometimes when I'm holding something delicate I feel like dropping it. I don't know why.”
― Louise Penny

“In winter the very ground seemed to reach up and grab the elderly, yanking them to earth as though hungry for them.”
― Louise Penny, Bury Your Dead

“Why be a saint unless you could also be a martyr?”
― Louise Penny

“All my works have vessels of some sort. Containers. Sometimes it's in the negative space, sometimes it's more obvious ...

He's very loyal. He puts everything he has into one thing. one interest, one hobby, one friend, one love. I'm his love and it scares the shit out of me ... He's poured all his love into me. I'm his vessel. But suppose I crack? Suppose I break? Suppose I die? What would he do?”
― Louise Penny, A Fatal Grace

“Eventually he'd let the answering machine take over and had hidden in his studio. Where he's hidden all his life. From the monster.

He could feel itin their bedroom now. He could feel its tail swishing by him. Feel its hot, fetid breath.

All his life he knew if he was quiet enough, small enough, it wouldnn't see him. If he didn't make a fuss, didn't speak up, it wouldn't hear him, wouldn't hurt him. If he was beyond criticism and hid his cruelty with a smile and good deeds, it wouldn't devour him.

By now he realized there was no hiding. It would always be there, and always find him.

He was the monster.”
― Louise Penny

“Life is change. If you aren't growing and evolving, you're standing still, and the rest of the world is surging ahead.”
― Louise Penny, Still Life