A Great Reckoning (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #12)

by Louise Penny

Anyone could be clever. Anyone could be smart. Anyone could be taught. But not everyone was kind.

“It’s too easy to feed the anger. Too cowardly to stoke the hate. You must look inside yourself and decide who you are and who you want to be. Character is not created in times like these. It’s revealed. This is a trying time. A testing time. Be careful.”

“Even the word is interesting. Map. It comes from mappa mundi. Mappa is Latin for napkin. Mundi is world, of course. Isn’t that wonderful? A napkin, with their world on it. The mundane and the magnificent. Map.”

the cadets need to understand that we all have burdens, don’t you agree, Commander? Some so weighty we carry them our whole lives. They can blight our very existence, or they can make us stronger. They can make us bitter or teach us compassion. They can drive us to do things we never thought ourselves capable of.

Ruth believed in precycling. An evolution on recycling. She made use of things before people threw them out.

“There is always a road back. If we have the courage to look for it, and take it. I’m sorry. I was wrong. I don’t know.” He paused again. “I need help. Those are the signposts. The cardinal directions.”