Sgfrisch > Sgfrisch's Quotes

“Her fantasy of having horses disappeared along with all the other unlikely dreams, replaced by board meetings and clients, by gym memberships and increasingly expensive clothing. Until finally her cup, overflowing, had upended and all the lovely promotions and vacations and spa treatments became insubstantial. But at the bottom of that cup filled with goals, objectives, targets, one last drop remained.”
― Louise Penny, The Brutal Telling

“I’m sorry. I was wrong. I need help. I don’t know.”
― Louise Penny, Bury Your Dead

“They don’t teach this at medical school, but I’ve seen it in real life. People die in bits and pieces. A series of petites morts. Little deaths. They lose their sight, their hearing, their independence. Those are the physical ones. But there’re others. Less obvious, but more fatal. They lose heart. They lose hope. They lose faith. They lose interest. And finally, they lose themselves.”
― Louise Penny, The Beautiful Mystery

“Corruption and brutality are modeled and expected and rewarded. It becomes normal. And anyone who stands up to it, who tells them it’s wrong, is beaten down. Or worse.”
― Louise Penny, How the Light Gets In

“He’d rather rule in hell than serve in heaven. And to do that all he needed to do was to manufacture rage, then direct it at the federal government. He’d convince the population that the reason the bridge had come down was that Canada had willfully used substandard material. That the federal government did not care for the citizens of Québec.”
― Louise Penny, How the Light Gets In

“What’s the difference between a commune and a cult?” asked Beauvoir. “Both have a sort of guiding philosophy,” said Myrna. “But a commune is open—members can come and go. A cult is closed. Rigid. Demands conformity and absolute loyalty to the leader and the beliefs. It shuts people off from the greater society.”
― Louise Penny, The Long Way Home

“A brave man in a brave country. It was easy to be brave, when the country was also brave. But what happened if it wasn’t? If it was corrupt, and grotesque, and greedy, and violent?”
― Louise Penny, The Long Way Home

“No, the Archangel Michael told me that, just before he asked me to pray for the greatest sinner of all.” “Who had no conscience,” Myrna pointed out. “Or a warped one. A conscience is not necessarily a good thing. How many gays are beaten, how many abortion clinics bombed, how many blacks lynched, how many Jews murdered, by people just following their conscience?”
― Louise Penny, Glass Houses

“A conscience guides us,” Myrna called after her. “To do the right thing. To be brave. To be selfless and courageous. To stand up to tyrants whatever the cost.” Ruth stopped and turned back to look at them. “You might almost say it’s luminous,” she said, pausing on the steps up to the porch. Holding their eyes. “Sometimes all is not well.”
― Louise Penny, Glass Houses

“Terrorists fed off threats more than actual acts. Their weapon of choice was fear. Sometimes they were lone wolves, sometimes organized cells. Sometimes the terror came from governments.”
― Louise Penny, Glass Houses

“Even atrocities. We might not like the explanation, but we can’t deny it. Look at Nuremberg. Why did the Holocaust happen?” “Because deluded, power-crazy leaders needed a common enemy,” said Clara. “No,” said Myrna. “It happened because no one stopped them. Not enough people stood up soon enough. And why was that?” “Fear?” asked Clara. “Yes, partly. And partly programming. All around them, respectable Germans saw others behaving brutally toward people they considered outsiders. The Jews, gypsies, gays. It became normal and acceptable. No one told them what was happening was wrong. In fact, just the opposite.” “No one should have had to,” snapped Reine-Marie.”
― Louise Penny, Glass Houses

“We see it when bullies are in charge. It becomes part of the culture of an institution, a family, an ethnic group, a country. It becomes not just acceptable, but expected. Applauded even.” “But what you’re describing is a sort of counterfeit conscience,” said Reine-Marie. “Something that might look ‘right’ but is actually wrong. No one with an actual conscience would stand for it.” “I wonder if that’s true,” said Myrna. “There was a famous psychological study, a test really. It was designed as a response to the Nazi trials, and their defense that their consciences were clear. It was war and they were just doing as they were told.”
― Louise Penny, Glass Houses

“Knowing that it was not a vile few. It wasn’t “them.” It was us. That was one of the many horrors of the Nuremberg trials. Of the Eichmann trial. Something all but forgotten today. The banality of evil.”
― Louise Penny, Glass Houses

“The village does not exist, physically. But I think of it as existing in ways that are far more important and powerful. Three Pines is a state of mind. When we choose tolerance over hate. Kindness over cruelty. Goodness over bullying. When we choose to be hopeful, not cynical. Then we live in Three Pines.”
― Louise Penny, Glass Houses

“And the enemy you’ll be fighting is yourself.”
― Louise Penny, Kingdom of the Blind

“Whale oil beef hooked.”
― Louise Penny, Kingdom of the Blind

“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.”
― Louise Penny, Kingdom of the Blind

“Myrna understood how damaging it was to compare pain. To dismiss hurt just because it wasn’t the worst.”
― Louise Penny, A Better Man

“Is it true? Is it kind? Does it need to be said?”
― Louise Penny, A Better Man

“Documents were destroyed. The archives themselves were in a shocking state after the war. They’d been ransacked by the Nazis, who burned anything that contradicted their worldview. We lost countless irreplaceable manuscripts.”
― Louise Penny, All the Devils Are Here

“Reine-Marie shook her head. 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.”
― Louise Penny, All the Devils Are Here

“It did seem appropriate that a garden named for a man who hid Jews in the war should itself be almost hidden. But the Gamaches knew how to find it, just off rue des Rosiers. The jardin Joseph-Migneret was quiet this Thursday morning in mid-October, and they had it almost all to themselves.”
― Louise Penny, All the Devils Are Here

“But correct and right were two different things. As were facts and truth.”
― Louise Penny, The Madness of Crowds

“Evil is unspectacular and always human, Auden had written. And shares our bed and eats at our own table.”
― Louise Penny, A World of Curiosities

“I was just thinking about Anne Lamarque.” She took the brush from between her teeth, smearing more paint in her hair and on her cheek, and used it to motion at the canvas. “She was punished for many things, including being happy. So I wanted to capture that. The power of it. Happiness as an act of defiance. A revolutionary act.”
― Louise Penny, A World of Curiosities

“Evil is unspectacular, and always human, And shares our bed and eats at our own table, And we are introduced to Goodness every day. Even in drawing rooms, among a crowd of faults.”
― Louise Penny, A World of Curiosities

“the advice of Saint Augustine. It is solved by walking.”
― Louise Penny, The Grey Wolf

“No place is safe if built on a foundation of hatred.”
― Louise Penny, The Grey Wolf

“One evening, as they sat by a fire on the shore over there, the Cree elder told the Abbot something that had happened to him when he was a child. His grandfather, the Chief at the time, told the boy that he had two wolves at war inside him, tearing at his insides. One of them, a grey wolf, wanted the old man to be strong and compassionate. Wise and courageous enough to be forgiving. The other, a black wolf, wanted him to be vengeful. To forget no wrong. To forgive no slight. To attack first. To be cruel and cunning and brutal to friends and enemies alike. To spare no one. Hearing this from his grandfather terrified the child. He ran away. It took a few days before he dared approach the old man again. When he did, he asked his grandfather, ‘Which wolf will win, the grey or the black?’” Armand was now watching Jean-Guy. It was as though they were the first, last, and only people on earth. “His grandfather said, ‘The one that I feed.”
― Louise Penny, The Grey Wolf

“There’s a huge black wolf out there, Jean-Guy. Has been for a while. Feeding on rage, on the need for power. Spreading fear and hatred. Infecting the frightened and vulnerable. Convincing them to do the unthinkable.”
― Louise Penny, The Grey Wolf