The Beautiful Mystery Quotes

“What did falling in love do for you? Can you ever really explain it? It filled empty spaces I never knew were empty. It cured a loneliness I never knew I had. It gave me joy. And freedom. I think that was the most amazing part. I suddenly felt both embraced and freed at the same time.”
― Louise Penny, The Beautiful Mystery

“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

“Beauvoir knew that the root of all evil wasn’t money. No, what created and drove evil was fear. Fear of not having enough money, enough food, enough land, enough power, enough security, enough love. Fear of not getting what you want, or losing what you have.”
― Louise Penny, The Beautiful Mystery

“The Catholic Church wasn't just a part of his parents' live, and his grandparents', it ruled their lives. The priests told them what to eat, what to do, who to vote for, what to think. What to believe.

Told them to have more and more babies. Kept them pregnant and poor and ignorant.

They'd been beaten in school, scolded in church, abused in the back rooms.

And when, after generations of this, they'd finally walked away, the Church had accused them of being unfaithful. And threatened them with eternal damnation.”
― Louise Penny, The Beautiful Mystery

“Had peace and quiet become so rare that when finally found they could be mistaken for something grotesque and unnatural? It would appear so.”
― Louise Penny, The Beautiful Mystery

“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

“Plenty of time for a close friendship to turn to hate. As only a good friendship could. The conduit to the heart was already created.”
― Louise Penny, The Beautiful Mystery

“We don't just sing; we are the song.”
― Louise Penny, The Beautiful Mystery

“We can all fall,” said the abbot. “But perhaps not as hard and not as fast and not as far as someone who spends his life on the ascent.”
― Louise Penny, The Beautiful Mystery

“Jeez,” said Beauvoir. “The Inquisition. I didn’t expect that.” “No one does,” said Gamache.”
― Louise Penny, The Beautiful Mystery

“The glass was old. Leaded. Imperfect. And it was the imperfections that were creating the play of light.”
― Louise Penny, The Beautiful Mystery

“like a living chant. Each of us individual notes. On our own, nothing. But together? Divine. We don’t just sing, we are the song.”
― Louise Penny, The Beautiful Mystery

“It was like walking into joy.”
― Louise Penny, The Beautiful Mystery

“There's no wrong answer. Just the truth.”
― Louise Penny, The Beautiful Mystery

“They had such a profound effect on those who sang and heard them that the ancient chants became known as “the beautiful mystery.”
― Louise Penny, The Beautiful Mystery

“Apart they were individual colors, but together they made giddy light.”
― Louise Penny, The Beautiful Mystery

“Greek for ‘breath.’ The monks who first wrote down the chants believed that the deeper we breathe the more we draw God into ourselves. And there’s no deeper breath than when we’re singing. Have you ever noticed that the deeper you breathe, the calmer you get?” the monk asked.”
― Louise Penny, The Beautiful Mystery

“Abbots and priors and monks, oh my.”
― Louise Penny, The Beautiful Mystery

“What”
― Louise Penny, The Beautiful Mystery

“There was no written record of the earliest chants. They were so old, more than a millenium, that they predated written music.”
― Louise Penny, The Beautiful Mystery

“In trying to capture the beautiful mystery, this monk had invented written music. Not yet notes, what he’d written became known as neumes.”
― Louise Penny, The Beautiful Mystery

“Fucked up”
― Louise Penny, The Beautiful Mystery

“It made him look contemplative”
― Louise Penny, The Beautiful Mystery

“They lose hope. They lose faith. They lose interest. And finally, they lose themselves.”
― Louise Penny, The Beautiful Mystery

“The prior, Gamache thought, must have had a hard head.”
― Louise Penny, The Beautiful Mystery

“Gamache smiled. "Not a fan?"
"Are you kidding? Of Gregorian chants? A bunch of men singing without instruments, practically in a monotone, in Latin? What's not to love?”
― Louise Penny, The Beautiful Mystery

“Once he was gone and she could no longer see the back of his car, Annie Gamache closed the door and held her hand to her chest. She wondered if this was how her mother had felt, for all those years. How her mother felt at that very moment. Was she too leaning against the door, having watched her heart leave? Having let it go.”
― Louise Penny, The Beautiful Mystery

“This was the near mythical monastery of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups. The home of two dozen cloistered, contemplative monks. Who had built their abbey as far from civilization as they could get. Twenty-four men had stepped beyond the door. It had closed. And not another living soul had been admitted. Until today. Chief Inspector Gamache, Jean-Guy Beauvoir and Captain Charbonneau were about to be let in. Their ticket was a dead man.”
― Louise Penny, The Beautiful Mystery

“Enid, his ex-wife, had also listened. But there was always an edge of desperation about it, a demand. As though he owed her. As though she was dying and he was the medicine. Enid left him drained, and yet still feeling inadequate.”
― Louise Penny, The Beautiful Mystery

“McGill University professor Daniel J. Levitin called This Is Your Brain on Music, about the neuroscience of music—its effects on our brains.”
― Louise Penny, The Beautiful Mystery