Jill Bonham > Jill's Quotes

“Was everyone else really as alive as she was?... If the answer was yes, then the world, the social world, was unbearably complicated, with two billion voices, and everyone’s thoughts striving in equal importance and everyone’s claim on life as intense, and everyone thinking they were unique, when no one was. One could drown in irrelevance.”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

“There did not have to be a moral. She need only show separate minds, as alive as her own, struggling with the idea that other minds were equally alive. It wasn't only wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding, above all, it was the failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you. And only in a story could you enter these different minds and show how they had an equal value. That was the only moral a story need have.”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

“It's a blessing Madame Gamache and I had at our wedding. It was read at the end of the ceremony.

Now you will feel no rain
For each of you will be shelter for the other
Now you will feel no cold
For each of you will be warmth for the other
Now there is no loneliness for you
Now there is no more loneliness.
Now you are two persons, but there is one life before you.
Go now to your dwelling place
To enter into the days of your togetherness.
And may your days be good and long upon this earth.

(Apache Blessing)”
― Louise Penny, Bury Your Dead

“Things are strongest where they're broken.”
― Louise Penny, Bury Your Dead

“Wait, Armand, he heard behind him but kept walking, ignoring the calls. Then he remembered what Emile had meant to him and still did. Did this one bad thing wipe everything else out?

That was the danger. Not that betrayals happened, not that cruel things happened, but that they could outweigh all the good. That we could forget the good and only remember the bad.

But not today. Gamache stopped.”
― Louise Penny, Bury Your Dead

“Joy doesn't ever leave, you know. It's always with you. And one day you'll find it again.”
― Louise Penny, Bury Your Dead

“To be silent. In hopes of not offending, in hopes of being accepted.

But what happened to people who never spoke, never raised their voices? Kept everything inside?

Gamache knew what happened. Everything they swallowed, every word, thought, feeling rattled around inside, hollowing the person out. And into that chasm they stuffed their words, their rage.”
― Louise Penny, Bury Your Dead

“One of the elders told him that when he was a boy his grandfather came to him one day and said he had two wolves fighting inside him. One was gray, the other black. The gray one wanted his grandfather to be courageous, and patient, and kind. The other, the black one, wanted his grandfather to be fearful and cruel. This upset the boy, and he thought about it for a few days then returned to his grandfather. He asked, 'Grandfather, which of the wolves will win?'

The abbot smiled slightly and examined the Chief Inspector. 'Do you know what his grandfather said?'

Gamache shook his head. . . .

'The one I feed,' said Dom Philippe.”
― Louise Penny, The Beautiful Mystery

“We let each other be who we are,” Curran said. “I don’t have to like all of the things she has to do. I love her.”
― Ilona Andrews, Magic Shifts

“she knew the real threat to her happiness came not from the dot in the distance, but from looking for it. Expecting it. Waiting for it. And in some cases, creating it.”
― Louise Penny, The Long Way Home

“The world is only broken into two tribes: The people who are assholes and the people who are not.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian