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after many years as a resister, I now completely believe that sometimes drowning men (and women) are saved. And, when coughed back, might even find some measure of peace in a small village. In the sunshine.
while the best art reflected humanity and nature, human or otherwise, galleries themselves were often cold and austere. Neither inviting nor natural.
a world weary and wary of miracles. A world too busy to notice a stone rolled back. It had moved on to other wonders.
Teachers and parents think those classrooms and hallways are filled with students but they’re not. They’re filled with feelings. Bumping into each other. Hurting each other. It’s horrible.”
Some cracks let the light in. Some let the darkness out.
it’s easier to be clever when you criticize.
The Chief believed if you sift through evil, at the very bottom you’ll find good. He believed that evil has its limits.
Artists are either complete bums, hardly wash, drunk and filthy most of the time, or they’re well, that.” He waved toward the pictures in Beauvoir’s hand. “Over-the-top. Loud. ‘Look at me’ types. Both are very tiring.”
Artists are needy, crazy people who take up a lot of space and time. Exhausting. Like babies.”
“There’s everything new, if you look below the surface,”
“I love that an artist could be plucked out of obscurity and discovered at the age of almost fifty. What artist doesn’t dream of it? What artist doesn’t believe, every morning, it will happen before bedtime?
who’s to say who’s right? That’s what drives artists and dealers crazy. It’s so subjective.”
visited the homes of many of our favorite artists and writers and poets.” “Why?” Gamache paused for a few moments, considering. “Because they seem magical.”
“C’est ça,” said Marois at last. “Magic.
“She sounds like an emotional vampire,” said Myrna, at last. “A what?” “I ran into quite a few in my practice. People who sucked others dry. We all know them. We’re in their company and come away drained, for no apparent reason.”
artists. They were sensitive. Often self-absorbed. Often not fit for polite society. Some, he suspected, were deeply unbalanced. It would not be an easy life. Living on the margins, often in poverty. Being ignored and even ridiculed. By society, by funding agencies, even by other artists.
people as sensitive as artists. He suspected living like that created fear. And fear begat anger and enough anger over enough time led to a dead woman in a garden.
Armand Gamache had a great deal of time for artists. But he was under no illusion about what they were capable of. Great creation, and great destruction.
Inside every living thing, no matter how beautiful, if opened fully enough was darkness.
murder has a long memory.”
Fear and greed. That was what drove the art world.
Perhaps that’s the price of poetry. And, apparently, art.” “What d’you mean?” “We get hurt into it. No pain, no product.”
It was always the question. Who do you believe? And how do you decide?
Many might have thought the Chief Inspector was a hunter. He tracked down killers. But Jean-Guy knew he wasn’t that. Chief Inspector Gamache was an explorer by nature. He was never happier than when he was pushing the boundaries, exploring the internal terrain. Areas even the person themselves hadn’t explored. Had never examined. Probably because it was too scary.
Gamache went there. To the end of the known world, and beyond. Into the dark, hidden places. He looked into the crevices, where the worst things hid. And Jean-Guy Beauvoir followed.
“You’re lying on your deathbed. You have one hour to live. Who is it, exactly, you have needed all these years to forgive?”
This was, of course, the worst part of any case. Telling the living about the death.
In confusion, in fractures, lay danger. Not just internal squabbles and politics, but something real and threatening. If they weren’t clear and cohesive, if they didn’t work together as a team, a violent criminal could escape. Or worse. Kill again.
Murderers hid in the tiniest of cracks.
Something that seemed to have crawled into him while he’d lain in his own blood on the floor of that factory. Sorrow. Since that moment death had never been the same, and neither, it must be said, had life.
But still, they’d opened the door a crack, and a crack was enough. If there was something malevolent, malicious, murderous on the other side, a crack was all it needed.
Madame and Monsieur Dyson were gone now. 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.
The glorious front hid what was foul.
I have a choice of what to believe, and it doesn’t always have to be the worst.”
a subtle, private faith.
Beauvoir believed in forgiveness, but only after punishment.
the most difficult thing in the world. She was waiting and she was hoping.
How long did hope live?
And if hope lasted forever, how long did hate last?
Most of us are brought down by a bunch of tiny transgressions. Little things that add up until we collapse under them. It’s fairly easy to avoid doing the big bad things, but it’s the hundred mean little things that’ll get you eventually. If you listen to people long enough you realize it’s not the slap or the punch, but the whispered gossip, the dismissive look. The turned back. That’s what people with any conscience are ashamed of. That’s what they drink to forget.”
The problem with a pissing contest, as Gamache knew, was that what should have remained private became public.
“People change when they have no choice. It’s change or die.
Maybe, he thought, that was the point of Humpty Dumpty. He wasn’t meant to be put together again. He was meant to be different. After all, an egg on a wall would always be in peril. Maybe Humpty Dumpty had to fall. And maybe all the King’s men had to fail.
“People do change, Chief Inspector. But you need to know something.” She lowered her voice. “It’s not always for the better.”
The hand that made it had destroyed it.
The spotlight could be a tricky thing. It could send a person rushing for someplace dim to hide. Away from the crippling glare of public approval.
it wasn’t just inspiration he was looking for, it was more. That had been the problem. All his life he’d mistaken the one for the other. Thinking inspiration was enough. Mistaking the created for the Creator.
“It’s not that sobriety is so fragile, it’s that addiction is so cunning.
“Every human needs watching.” That sent chills down Gamache,
There’s something freeing, when you help your enemy.”
