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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Louise Penny
Read between
February 16 - February 25, 2023
“I’m fine,” said Clara. “Fucked up, insecure, neurotic and egotistical?”
He’d seen her laugh with real gaiety, seen her listen to very boring people as though they were riveting. She looked as though she was genuinely glad to see them. As though they were important. He’d seen her dance, arms flailing and head tilted back. Eyes shining.
Where other women, including Enid, were lovely, Annie Gamache was alive.
“There is strong shadow where there is much light.”
“But most he loved a happy human face.”
Armand Gamache knew no good ever came from putting up walls. What people mistook for safety was in fact captivity. And few things thrived in captivity.
Beauvoir knew the only thing worse than no apology was an insincere one.
“Maybe it isn’t hope at all,” said Marois, “but merely a trick of the light.”
Below that was the thrum of bumblebees climbing in and over and around the peonies. Getting lost. Bumbling around.
Where people butted in as though she was invisible, and interrupted her as though she hadn’t just spoken.
Where bumbling was a virtue.
Clara Morrow wanted to belong.
Something horrible come calling, wrapped in civility and good manners.
Teachers and parents think those classrooms and hallways are filled with students but they’re not. They’re filled with feelings.
Some cracks let the light in. Some let the darkness out.
Beauvoir still held his cell phone in his hand. A pacifier.
“She sounds like an emotional vampire,”
Fear and greed. That was what drove the art world.
“Her brain seems fine, it’s only her heart that’s stopped.”
When had he died? Clara wondered. And why hadn’t she noticed?
Whoever said, ‘Hell is other people’ must have been an artist.” “It was Sartre,” said Gamache. “A writer.”
a powerful man in a world of vulnerable people.
Inspector Beauvoir always thought the worst. It was safer that way.
Beauvoir believed in forgiveness, but only after punishment.
But mostly he thought about the corrosive effect of secrets.
She was doing the most difficult thing in the world. She was waiting and she was hoping.
Most of us are brought down by a bunch of tiny transgressions.
“Sobriety isn’t for cowards,
“Fucked up, insecure, neurotic and egotistical? Ruth’s definition of fine?”
this little village produced bodies and gourmet meals in equal proportion.
“Not with a club the heart is broken.”
There were worse things than not meeting God. Meeting Him, for instance.
The hand that made it had destroyed it.
“Every human needs watching.”
What happened when not only hopes were dashed, but dreams and careers. A whole life?
Nothing stirred. Except a homicide detective.
not waving but drowning.”
“I was much too far out all my life / And not waving but drowning.” How do Stevie Smith’s lines
