A Rule Against Murder Quotes

“But you want murderous feelings? Hang around librarians," confided Gamache. "All that silence. Gives them ideas.”
― Louise Penny, A Rule Against Murder

“We're all blessed and we're all blighted, Chief Inspector," said Finney. "Everyday each of us does our sums. The question is, what do we count?”
― Louise Penny, A Rule Against Murder

“The only thing money really buys?...Space. A bigger house, a bigger car, a larger hotel room. First-class plane tickets. But it doesn't even buy comfort. No one complains more than the rich and entitled. Comfort, security, ease. None of them come with money.”
― Louise Penny, A Rule Against Murder

“Her tragedy was that she always found men to save her. She never had to save herself. She never knew she could.”
― Louise Penny, A Rule Against Murder

“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.”
― Louise Penny, A Rule Against Murder

“It's a shame that creativity and sloth look exactly the same.”
― Louise Penny, A Rule Against Murder

“Murder was deeply human. A person was killed and a person killed. And what powered the final thrust wasn't a whim, wasn't an event. It was an emotion. Something once healthy and human had become wretched and bloated and finally buried. But not put to rest. It lay there, often for decades, feeding on itself, growing and gnawing, grim and full of grievance. Until it finally broke free of all human restraint. Not conscience, not fear, not social convention could contain it. When that happened, all hell broke loose. And a man became a monster.”
― Louise Penny, A Rule Against Murder

“Be careful. You're making hurting a habit. Spreading it around won't lessen your pain, you know. Just the opposite.”
― Louise Penny, A Rule Against Murder

“Not everything needed to be brought into the light, he knew. Not every truth needed to be told.”
― Louise Penny, A Rule Against Murder

“…it’s not the truth about others that will set you free, but the truth about yourself.”
― Louise Penny, A Rule Against Murder

“Grief was dagger-shaped and sharp and pointed inward. It was made of fresh loss and old sorrow. Rendered and forged and sometimes polished. Irene Finney had taken her daughter’s death and to that sorrow she’d added a long life of entitlement and disappointment, of privilege and pride. And the dagger she’d fashioned was taking a brief break from slashing her insides, and was now pointed outward.”
― Louise Penny, A Rule Against Murder

“the feelings flattened and folded and turned into something else, like emotional origami.”
― Louise Penny, A Rule Against Murder

“To live in chaos was to live in a prison. Order freed the mind for other things.”
― Louise Penny, A Rule Against Murder

“…the pain of neuralgia…she knew what they thought. That she was cold. Couldn't feel. But in fact she felt too much. Too deeply.”
― Louise Penny, A Rule Against Murder

“What killed people wasn't a bullet, a blade, a fist to the face. What killed people was a feeling. Left too long. Sometimes in the cold, frozen. Sometimes buried and fetid. And sometimes on the shores of a lake, isolated. Left to grow old, and odd.”
― Louise Penny, A Rule Against Murder

“Rules meant order. Without them they’d be killing each other. It began with butting in, with parking in disabled spaces, with smoking in elevators. And it ended in murder.”
― Louise Penny, A Rule Against Murder

“What could be worse? Dying, and not being missed.”
― Louise Penny, A Rule Against Murder

“You can tell a lot about a man by his friends, or lack of them. Do they bring out the best in each other, or are they always gossiping, tearing others down? Keeping wounds alive?”
― Louise Penny, A Rule Against Murder

“I saw a lot of men die there. Most men. Do you know what killed them?”…”Despair,” said Finney. “They believed themselves to be prisoners. I lived with those men, ate the same maggot-infested food, slept in the same beds, did the same back-breaking work. But they died and I lived. Do you know why?” “You were free.” “I was free. Milton was right…the mind is its own place. I was never a prisoner. Not then, not now.”
― Louise Penny, A Rule Against Murder

“He was drawn to the edge of things. To the places old mariners knew, and warned, “Beyond here be monsters.”… He stepped into the beyond, and found the monsters hidden deep inside all the reasonable, gentle, laughing people. He went where even they were afraid to go.”
― Louise Penny, A Rule Against Murder

“…the most devastating thing Finney could have said. Not that Peter was hated by his father. But that he’d been loved all along. He’d interpreted kindness as cruelty, generosity as meanness, support as tethers. How horrible to have been offered love, and to have chosen hate instead. He’d turned heaven into hell.”
― Louise Penny, A Rule Against Murder

“…believing sarcasm and rude remarks kept the monsters at bay. They didn’t.”
― Louise Penny, A Rule Against Murder

“She was stuffing her innards back. Sewing herself up, putting her skin, her make-up, her party frock back on.”
― Louise Penny, A Rule Against Murder

“He expected people to play fair. Rules meant order. Without them they’d be killing each other. It began with butting in, with parking in disabled spaces, with smoking in elevators. And it ended in murder.”
― Louise Penny, A Rule Against Murder

“Chief Inspector Gamache knew one thing about hate. It bound you forever to the person you hated.”
― Louise Penny, A Rule Against Murder

“She knew how the Chief Inspector preferred decorum at the site of a murder, especially in the presence of the corpse. It was rare. Most murder scenes were filled with smart-ass and often gruesome comments, made by men and women frightened by what they saw, and believing sarcasm and rude remarks kept the monsters at bay. They didn’t.”
― Louise Penny, A Rule Against Murder

“Do you know the sums that I do?” “I count my blessings.”
― Louise Penny, A Rule Against Murder

“All Armand’s life Honoré had lived in light. Unchallenged….Armand put out his hand, and touched the door. The last room, the last door [in the longhouse]. The last territory to explore didn't hold monstrous hate or bitterness or rancid resentments. It held love. Blinding, beautiful love.”
― Louise Penny, A Rule Against Murder

“…walked deep into the shadow, deep into the longhouse where all his experiences and memories lived…”
― Louise Penny, A Rule Against Murder

“Irene Finney filled the void with a child not loved then lost, but first lost, then loved.”
― Louise Penny, A Rule Against Murder