Louise Penny Quotes

27 Sourced Quotes

"Let every man shovel out his own snow, and the whole city will be passable," said Gamache. Seeing Beauvoir's puzzled expression he added, "Emerson." "Lake and Palmer?" "Ralph and Waldo."

Louise Penny
But, like peace, comfort didn't come from hiding away or running away. Comfort first demanded courage.

Louise Penny
After spending most of her life scanning the horizon for slights and threats, genuine and imagined, 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. Her father had jokingly accused her of living in the wreckage of her future. Until one day she'd looked deep into his eyes and saw he wasn't joking. He was warning her.

Louise Penny
Fear lives in the head. And courage lives in the heart. The job is to get from one to the other.

Louise Penny
Her voice was slightly accented but her French was perfect. Someone who'd not just learned the language but loved it. And it showed with every syllable. Gamache knew it was impossible to split language from culture. That without one the other withered. To love the language was to respect the culture.

Louise Penny
It's a shame that creativity and sloth look exactly the same.

Louise Penny
Life is change. If you aren't growing and evolving, you're standing still, and the rest of the world is surging ahead.

Louise Penny
Now here's a good one: you're lying on your deathbed. You have one hour to live. Who is it, exactly, you have needed all these years to forgive?

Louise Penny
But you want murderous feelings? Hang around librarians," confided Gamache. "All that silence. Gives them ideas.

Louise Penny
The leaves had fallen from the trees and lay crisp and crackling beneath his feet. Picking one up he marveled, not for the first time, at the perfection of nature where leaves were most beautiful at the very end of their lives.

Louise Penny
I went through a period in my life when I had no friends, when the phone never rang, when I thought I would die from loneliness. I know that the real blessing here isn't that I have a book published, but that I have so many people to thank.

Louise Penny
The women in the room chatted about love, about childhood, about losing parents, about Mr. Spock, about good books they'd read. They mothered each other.

Louise Penny
He tried to let her know it would be all right. Eventually. Life wouldn't always be this painful. The world wouldn't always be this brutal. Give it time, little one. Give it another chance. Come back.

Louise Penny
I was tired of seeing the Graces always depicted as beautiful young things. I think wisdom comes with age and life and pain. And knowing what matters.

Louise Penny
Every year the hunters shot cows and horses and family pets and each other. And unbelievably, they sometimes shot themselves, perhaps in a psychotic episode where they mistook themselves for dinner

Louise Penny
In winter the very ground seemed to reach up and grab the elderly, yanking them to earth as though hungry for them.

Louise Penny
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
I'm just like this. I have no talent for choosing my battles. Life seems, strangely, like a battle to me. The whole thing.

Louise Penny
Life is choice. All day, everyday. Who we talk to, where we sit, what we say, how we say it. And our lives become defined by our choices. It's as simple and as complex as that. And as powerful. so when I'm observing that's what I'm watching for. The choices people make

Louise Penny
What haunted people even, perhaps especially, on their deathbed? What chased them, tortured them and brought some of them to their knees? And [he] thought he had the answer. Regret. Regret for things said, things done, and things not done. Regret for the people they might have been. And failed to be.

Louise Penny
Myrna could spend happy hours browsing bookcases. She felt if she could just get a good look at a person's bookcase and their grocery cart, she'd pretty much know who they were.

Louise Penny
Where there is love there is courage, where there is courage there is peace, where there is peace there is God. And when you have God, you have everything.

Louise Penny
Peter swept aside Yogi Tea and Harmony Herbal Blend, though he hesitated a second over the chamomile..... But no. Violent death demanded Earl Grey.

Louise Penny
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
When someone stabs you it's not your fault that you feel pain.

Louise Penny
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
Aid workers, when handing out food to starving people, quickly learn that the people fighting for it at the front are the people who need it least. It's the people sitting quietly at the back, too weak to fight, who need it the most. And so too with tragedy.

Louise Penny