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where else would you find darkness but right up against the light? What greater triumph for evil than to ruin a garden?
“Patience. Patience. With patience comes choice, and with choice comes power.”
Life can be cruel, as you know. But it can also be kind. Filled with wonders. You need to remember that. You have your own choice to make, Armand. What’re you going to focus on? What’s unfair, or all the wonderful things that happen? Both are true, both are real. Both need to be accepted. But which carries more weight with you?” Stephen tapped the boy’s chest. “The terrible or the wonderful? The goodness or the cruelty? Your life will be decided by that choice.”
Less a hunter than an explorer, Armand Gamache delved into what people thought, but mostly how they felt. Because that was where actions were conceived. Noble acts. And acts of the greatest cruelty.
If there was one thing the senior police officer understood, it was that everyone had strengths. And weaknesses. The important thing was to
recognize them. And not expect something from someone who didn’t have it to give.
Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.” “Charming. But this’s Paris, Armand. The City of Light. No devils here.”
Gamache turned an astonished face to his friend. “You’re joking, of course.” He examined Dussault. “The Terror was partly inspired by the Age of Enlightenment. How many Protestants massacred, how many men and women guillotined, how many Jews hunted and killed? How many innocents murdered by terrorists here in the City of Light would agree with you? There’re devils here. You of all people know that.”
Don’t believe everything you think.
Chief Inspector Gamache wrote that on the board for the incoming cadets at the start of every year at the Sûreté academy, and it stayed there all year. At first the students in the class he taught laughed. It sounded clever but silly. Little by little most got it. And those who didn’t did not progress further.
Le Bon Marché was the oldest, the first, store of its kind in Paris. Practically in the world. Opened in 1852, it predated Selfridges in London by more than half a century.
Gamache shook his head. His godfather was a complicated man. He kept his own counsel, and always had. His early experiences in the war had taught him that the fewer people who knew what was going on, the safer everyone was.
It was a quality he and his godson shared. A quality others did not always appreciate.
“How sick do you need to be to cover up something that could kill hundreds, maybe thousands?”
It happened more often than he cared to admit. But couldn’t deny. Airlines. Car manufacturers. Pharmaceuticals. Chemical companies. The entire tobacco industry. Companies knew. Governments knew. Even so-called watchdogs knew. And remained silent. And got rich.
While hundreds, thousands, millions died. Were killed. The Great Murders.
Fluctuat nec mergitur. Beaten by the waves, but never sinks.
“People believe what they want to believe,”
"It's just human nature."
“Hell is the truth seen too late,” said Reine-Marie as she poured out more coffee. “Thomas Hobbes.”
“Those are spears, tridents, in a circle.” The spears were radiating out from a central point, as though protecting it. “That’s no snowflake,” said Reine-Marie. “That’s a promise, and a warning. Clever.”
“The Helm of Awe,” Reine-Marie read, “is an ancient Norse symbol of protection and overwhelming might.”
There was nothing right or good in dying for your country. A necessity, sometimes, yes. But always a tragedy. Not an aspiration.
As a librarian and archivist herself, she knew that history wasn’t just written by the victors. First it had to be erased and rewritten. Replacing troublesome truth with self-serving myth.
With patience comes power.
C. S. Lewis wrote that we can create situations in which we are happy, but we cannot create joy. It just happens.
A little more than a year earlier I knew that the best of life was behind me. I could not have been more wrong.
We just don’t know. The key is to keep going. Joy might be just around the corner.
This is a book about love, about belonging. About family and friendship. It’s about how lives are shaped by our perceptions, by not just our memories, but how we remember things. It’s about choices. And courage.
