Glass Houses Quotes

“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

“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.”
― Louise Penny, Glass Houses

“November was the transition month. A sort of purgatory. It was the cold damp breath between dying and death. Between fall and the dead of winter.”
― Louise Penny, Glass Houses

“It wasn’t really, he knew, about less fear. It was about more courage.”
― Louise Penny, Glass Houses

“There seems such a fine line between falling into place and falling apart.”
― Louise Penny, Glass Houses

“But sometimes that comfort was an illusion. Masquerading as protecting, while actually imprisoning.”
― Louise Penny, Glass Houses

“Henri kept everything important in his heart. He mostly kept cookies in his head.”
― Louise Penny, Glass Houses

“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.”
― Louise Penny, Glass Houses

“He often said that words told them what someone was thinking, but the tone told them how they felt.”
― Louise Penny, Glass Houses

“Yes, facts were necessary. But frankly, anyone could be trained to collect a bloodstain or find a hair. Or an affair. Or a bank balance that didn’t balance. But feelings? Only the bravest wandered into that fiery realm.”
― Louise Penny, Glass Houses

“Some might argue that Three Pines itself isn’t real, and they’d be right, but limited in their view. 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

“If ever two men were made for cahoots, it was these two. They were cahootites.”
― Louise Penny, Glass Houses

“if love followed them through lifetimes, did hate also follow?”
― Louise Penny, Glass Houses

“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

“I'm sorry. I shouldn't be working."
"Of course you should. I'm alright."
"Even F.I.N.E.?"
She laughed. "Especially that."
Fucked-up. Insecure. Neurotic. Egotistical.”
― Louise Penny, Glass Houses

“There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supersedes all other courts.”
― Louise Penny, Glass Houses

“We’re used to the film versions of psychopaths. The clearly crazies. But most psychopaths are clever. They have to be. They know how to mimic human behavior. How to pretend to care, while not actually feeling anything except perhaps rage and an overwhelming and near-perpetual sense of entitlement. That they’ve been wronged. They get what they want mostly through manipulation.”
― Louise Penny, Glass Houses

“It’s important, Madeleine, not to cut people out of our lives. Isolation doesn’t make us better at our job. It makes us weaker, more vulnerable.”
― Louise Penny, Glass Houses

“But he was a thirty-nine-year-old black man. He’d been stopped so many times by the cops, he’d stopped counting. They’d had to train their fourteen-year-old son, from the time he could walk, how to behave when stopped by the cops. When harassed. When targeted. When pushed and provoked. Don’t react. Move slowly. Show your hands. Be polite, do as you’re asked. Don’t react.”
― Louise Penny, Glass Houses

“We all have, she knew, a place where we’re not only most comfortable, but most competent”
― Louise Penny, Glass Houses

“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. “Myrna’s right,” said Armand, breaking his silence. “We see what she describes all the time. I saw it in the Sûreté Academy. I saw it in the brutality of the Sûreté itself. 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.”
― Louise Penny, Glass Houses

“always struck him how much more effective silence was than words. If the effect you were after was to disconcert.”
― Louise Penny, Glass Houses

“The banality of evil. It wasn’t the frothing madman. It was the conscientious us.”
― Louise Penny, Glass Houses

“Friend of Bill was code. For a member of AA. Of which this Anton was clearly one. It was like finding a member of his tribe, unexpectedly. The two men stood in the warm kitchen, the sleet hitting the windows, and realized that while they knew nothing about each other, they actually knew each other better than almost anyone else on earth.”
― Louise Penny, Glass Houses

“if a woman was ever driven so far as to pick up a weapon, she would be the most committed, the least likely to ever give up. Kill the women first. Lacoste still hated the advice. The simplicity of it. The baldness. But she also hated that the philosophy behind it was almost certainly true.”
― Louise Penny, Glass Houses

“Well, you might’ve asked what he was doing there.” “I already had. And in any other circumstance, you’d be asking me why I, a police officer, was harassing a citizen who was just standing in a park, minding his own business.” “A masked citizen,” said the Crown. “Again,” said Gamache. “Being masked is not a crime. It’s strange, absolutely. And I’m not going to tell you I was happy about it. I wasn’t. But there was nothing I could do.”
― Louise Penny, Glass Houses

“That any decent person would’ve refused to participate in the Holocaust.”
― Louise Penny, Glass Houses

“Jews, gypsies, gays. It became normal and acceptable. No one told them what was happening was wrong. In fact, just the opposite.”
― Louise Penny, Glass Houses

“The trial is about facts, but feelings are also a fact.”
― Louise Penny, Glass Houses

“Progress not perfection.”
― Louise Penny, Glass Houses