The Nature of the Beast (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #11)

by Louise Penny

“You can’t be both happy and well adjusted,”

Knowledge wasn’t always power. Sometimes it was crippling.

The illusion shattered. That was the price of looking at things too closely.

words were weapons too, and when fashioned into a story their power was almost limitless.

“Where else would the devil go, but to paradise?” asked Beauvoir. “Where else would God go, but to hell,” said Rosenblatt.

grief took a terrible toll. It was paid at every birthday, every holiday, each Christmas. It was paid when glimpsing the familiar handwriting, or a hat, or a balled-up sock. Or hearing a creak that could have been, should have been, a footstep. Grief took its toll each morning, each evening, every noon hour as those who were left behind struggled forward.

FINE stood for Fucked up, Insecure, Neurotic, and Egotistical.