Kingdom of the Blind (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #14)

by Louise Penny

Yes. He remembered. “But I try not to dwell on it,” he said to Isabelle. Or, worse, dwell in it. Take up residence in the tragedies, the pain. The hurt. To make a home in hell.

“Things are strongest where they’re broken,” said Lacoste. “Agent Morin said that.” Things are strongest where they’re broken. Armand heard again the impossibly and eternally youthful voice of Paul Morin. As though he were standing right there, in Isabelle’s sunny kitchen with them. And Agent Morin had been right. But oh the pain of mending. “I’m lucky in a way,” Isabelle

“Non. He said, ‘Be very, very careful who you let into your life. And learn to make peace with whatever happens. You can’t erase the past. It’s trapped in there with you. But you can make peace with it. If you don’t,’ he said, ‘you’ll be at perpetual war.’” Armand smiled at the memory. “I think he knew what an idiot he was dealing with. He could see I was getting ready to tell him my own theory of life. At twenty-three. He showed me the door. But just as I was leaving, he said, ‘And the enemy you’ll be fighting is yourself.’”

Entitlement was, she knew, a terrible thing. It chained the person to their victimhood. It gobbled up all the air around it. Until the person lived in a vacuum, where nothing good could flourish. And the tragedy was almost always compounded, Myrna knew. These people invariably passed it on from generation to generation. Magnified each time. The sore point became their family legend, their myth, their legacy. What they lost became their most prized possession. Their inheritance. Of course, if they lost, then someone

It started with the four statements that lead to wisdom: I don’t know. I need help. I was wrong. I’m sorry. And ended with him saying, simply, “Matthew 10:36.”

And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.

realized, too, that the books are far more than Michael. Far more than Gamache. They’re the common yearning for community. For belonging. They’re about kindness, acceptance. Gratitude. They’re not so much about death, as life. And the consequences of the choices we make.