A Rule Against Murder (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #4)

by Louise Penny

I think her tragedy wasn’t that she had low self-esteem, though I think she had. Her tragedy was that she always found men to save her. She never had to save herself. She never knew she could.”

What killed people was a feeling. Left too long.

The sky was made of marshmallow, and it was falling.

“I had the impression he wasn’t missed. That the statue was more for them than him. A kind of replacement for grieving.”

After years of investigating murders Chief Inspector Gamache knew one thing about hate. It bound you forever to the person you hated. Murder wasn’t committed out of hate, it was done as a terrible act of freedom. To finally rid yourself of the burden.

You can’t get milk from a hardware store. So stop asking for something that can’t be given. And look for what is offered.

It’s a shame that creativity and sloth look exactly the same.”

was how every season smelled. It was how love and stability and belonging smelled. It was the perfume of friendship and ease and peace.

Grief was dagger-shaped and sharp and pointed inward. It was made of fresh loss and old sorrow. Rendered and forged and sometimes polished.

“Be careful,” Gamache whispered. “You’re making hurting a habit. Spreading it around won’t lessen your pain, you know. Just the opposite.”

She taught me that life goes on, and that I had a choice. To lament what I no longer had or be grateful for what remained.

The mind is its own place. I was never a prisoner. Not then, not now.”

“We’re all blessed and we’re all blighted, Chief Inspector,” said Finney. “Every day each of us does our sums. The question is, what do we count?”