A World of Curiosities Quotes

“Happiness as an act of defiance. A revolutionary act.”
― Louise Penny, A World of Curiosities

“They didn’t need proof. All a woman had to be was alive. Just being a woman was, in the church’s eyes, evil.”
“But there must’ve been a reason,” said Gabri.
“Is there a reason gay, lesbian, and transgender people are attacked?” asked Ruth. “Is there a reason Black men are shot? Is there a reason women are raped, abused, refused abortions, groomed and sold as sex slaves?”
“Murdered,” said Myrna, looking at the bouquet of white roses on the kitchen island.”
― Louise Penny, A World of Curiosities

“You need to remember that, Jean-Guy. The blindness you mention isn’t believing in the essential goodness of people, it’s failing to see it.”
― Louise Penny, A World of Curiosities

“Death sits on my shoulder like a crow … Or a judge, muttering about sluts and punishment. And licking his lips.”
― Louise Penny, A World of Curiosities

“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 more loneliness.”
― Louise Penny, A World of Curiosities

“You’re catastrophizing, allowing fear into the driver’s seat. You’re reacting to things that haven’t happened and behaving as though they have, or are inevitable. Focus on what is actually happening, here and now.” “Surrender to reality,” he said with a small grin and, grabbing a tissue, he rubbed his eyes. It was one of Hardye Moel’s favorite sayings. “Yes. Stop fighting battles that don’t exist. Focus on what does.”
― Louise Penny, A World of Curiosities

“The sofa always reminded him of the Monty Python sketch when a man, about to be tortured in the Inquisition, was threatened with the “comfy chair.” Dear God, he thought, not the sofa. It was an unexpected, certainly unintended, torture, though Clara didn’t seem to see it. The springs had long since let go, so that you either hit the concrete floor or, worse, a spring. He hovered over it for a moment, then, like a cliff diver, he committed.”
― Louise Penny, A World of Curiosities

“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

“holding on to resentments only binds you to the person you hate.”
― Louise Penny, A World of Curiosities

“A loss like this was a progression of miseries, like stepping-stones. Until they reached the other side. The new continent. Where the terrible reality lived, and the sun never fully came out again. But where, with time and help, they might find acceptance and, with that, peace.”
― Louise Penny, A World of Curiosities

“But being essentially a dumpster fire herself, she was familiar with flames.”
― Louise Penny, A World of Curiosities

“by parents who tried to pretend their progeny weren’t one jelly bean away from Lord of the Flies.”
― Louise Penny, A World of Curiosities

“...but you can never say it too often. You can never let someone know too often that they're precious, that they're missed.”
― Louise Penny, A World of Curiosities

“Now you will feel no rain / For each of you will be shelter for the other, Armand thought as he too got to his feet. It was the First Nations blessing he and Reine-Marie had had read at their wedding. Now there is no more loneliness. Go now to your dwelling place / To enter into the days of your togetherness.”
― Louise Penny, A World of Curiosities

“He was reminded again what Abbie Hoffman had said: We must eat what we kill. That would put an end to war.”
― Louise Penny, A World of Curiosities

“I’m sorry. I was wrong. I don’t know.” As he listed them, Chief Inspector Gamache raised a finger, until his palm was open. “I need help.”
― Louise Penny, A World of Curiosities

“You’ve seen worse, you’ve seen worse, you’ve seen worse,” she muttered to herself. Harriet wondered if that could possibly be true. It was also a strange, though oddly comforting, mantra. One she knew she could use for the rest of her life.”
― Louise Penny, A World of Curiosities

“From deep inside Harriet Landers came every shriek she’d ever swallowed. All the fear, the frustrations, the anger and buried resentments. The wounds, the pain, the losses and humiliations. The times she’d been ignored, marginalized, diminished. Judged and found wanting. The parties not invited to, the boys who’d mocked her. The girls who’d left her out. All her insecurities, loneliness, hurts, and rage from birth to this, her last moment, came rushing out.”
― Louise Penny, A World of Curiosities

“And now it is now, and the dark thing is here.”
― Louise Penny, A World of Curiosities

“Everyone, he knew, had one. A locked room. Either in their home, or their head, or their heart. Where things that should never see the light of day lived, and waited. For their chance to escape.”
― Louise Penny, A World of Curiosities

“We look to the so-called important figures. We value the papers left behind by Premiers, Prime Ministers, Presidents—by the most prominent witnesses to history—and forget there are other witnesses. The people who actually lived it. The First Nations. The farmers. The cooks and cleaners and salespeople. The laborers. The immigrants, the minorities.”
― Louise Penny, A World of Curiosities

“What the village in the valley offered was a place to heal. It offered company and companionship, in life and at the end of life. It offered a surefire cure for loneliness.”
― Louise Penny, A World of Curiosities

“To believe them when they said that the act was made possible because of hundreds of factors over hundreds of years that diminish, marginalize, sexualize, stigmatize women. It was an act of misogyny, as were the angry denials of the politicians, journalists, and gun advocates”
― Louise Penny, A World of Curiosities

“The shootings, the denials, the scoffing at all evidence of institutionalized misogyny, the pushback against gun control, the patronizing attitude of editors and politicians, only served to radicalize those women. Before the shooting, they were students. Now they were warriors. Before I was not a witch, wrote Ruth Zardo. But now I am one.”
― Louise Penny, A World of Curiosities

“Arguing as a now senior Sûreté officer that there was absolutely no reason a member of the public should have a handgun. And certainly not an assault-style weapon. They were only designed, and intended, to shoot humans.”
― Louise Penny, A World of Curiosities

“She lived, it seemed, at the place where the river Styx narrowed.”
― 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

“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

“pressed”
― 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