Top 450 Louise Penny Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “Some people keep their darkness inside, and some hide their light. You, mon ami, almost certainly have a croissant in there.”

— Louise Penny

52. “I don’t know. I need help. I was wrong. I’m sorry.” Armond Gamache.”

— Louise Penny

53. “When a woman commits to something she does it with both her heart and her head. Very powerful.”

— Louise Penny

54. “Like a first love, the place where peace is first found is never, ever forgotten.”

— Louise Penny

55. “She closed her eyes and felt him inside her skin. Where he was vibrant and smart and irreverent and loving. She saw his smile, heard his laugh. Felt his hands. Felt his body. Now he was gone. But he hadn’t left. And she sometimes wondered if that was him, beating on her heart. And she wondered what would happen if he stopped. Every night she came here. Parked. And stared at the window. Hoping to see some sign of life.”

— Louise Penny

56. “Matthew 10:36. ‘And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.”

— Louise Penny

57. “Ruth Zardo. A gifted poet. One of the most distinguished in the nation. But that gift had come wrapped in more than a dollop of crazy.”

— Louise Penny

58. “Oscar Wilde said that conscience and cowardice are the same thing. What stops us from doing horrible things isn’t our conscience but the fear of getting caught.”

— Louise Penny

59. “There are four statements that lead to wisdom. I want you to remember them and follow them. Are you ready?’ Agent Lemieux had taken out his notebook and, pen poised, he’d listened. ‘You need to learn to say: I don’t know. I’m sorry. I need help and I was wrong.”

— Louise Penny

60. “I’ll pray that you grow up a brave man in a brave country,” Clara said. “I will pray you find a way to be useful,” Gamache completed the quote.”

— Louise Penny

61. “Living in the wreckage of her future sure took the joy out of the present.”

— Louise Penny

62. “Life is loss. But out of that, as the book stresses, comes freedom. If we can accept that nothing is permanent, and change is inevitable, if we can adapt, then we’re going to be happier people.”

— Louise Penny

63. “When my death us do part Then shall forgiven and forgiving meet again, Or will it be, as always was, too late?”

— Louise Penny

64. “We don’t just sing; we are the song.”

— Louise Penny

65. “So much more comforting to see bad in others; gives us all sorts of excuses for our own bad behavior. But good? No, only really remarkable people see the good in others.”

— Louise Penny

66. “No. The real danger in a garden came from the bindweed. That moved underground, then surfaced and took hold. Strangling plant after healthy plant. Killing them all, slowly. And for no apparent reason, except that it was its nature. And then it disappeared underground again.”

— Louise Penny

67. “One day that ego of yours’ll kill you. That’s all it is, you know. You pretend it’s selfless, you pretend to be the great teacher, the wise and patient Armand Gamache, but you and I both know it’s ego. Pride. Be careful, my friend. She’s dangerous. You’ve said so yourself.”

— Louise Penny

68. “Loss was like that, Gamache knew. You didn’t just lose a loved one. You lost your heart, your memories, your laughter, your brain and it even took your bones. Eventually it all came back, but different. Rearranged.”

— Louise Penny

69. “Abby Hoffman said we should all eat what we kill. That would put an end to war.”

— Louise Penny

70. “Like a ship changing course. It might take a while to get to port, but at least it was going in the right direction.”

— Louise Penny

71. “When does a bush that burns become a Burning Bush?”

— Louise Penny

72. “Love wants the best for others. Attachment takes hostages.”

— Louise Penny

73. “In the kingdom of the blind, Amelia recited to herself as she trudged along – – the one-eyed man is king, Gamache read.”

— Louise Penny

74. “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

75. “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.”

— Louise Penny

76. “I think many people love their problems. Gives them all sorts of excuses for not growing up and getting on with life.”

— Louise Penny

77. “Time, it covered over everything eventually. Events, people, memory. Chiniquy had disappeared beneath Time.”

— Louise Penny

78. “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

79. “There’s more, but I won’t go on. It’s a poem by Rupert Brooke. He was a soldier in the First World War. It helped him in the hellhole of the trenches to think of the things he loved. It helped me too. I made mental lists and followed the things I love, the people I love, back to sanity. I still do.”

— Louise Penny

80. “You have one hour to live. Who is it, exactly, you have needed all these years to forgive?” Myrna.”

— Louise Penny

81. “That was the danger. Not that betrayals happened, not that cruel things happened, but that they could outweigh all the good. That we could forget the good and only remember the bad.”

— Louise Penny

82. “I’ve been treating you with courtesy and respect because that’s the way I choose to treat everyone. But never, ever mistake kindness with weakness.”

— Louise Penny

83. “Maps gave them control over their surroundings, for the first time ever. It showed how to get from one place to another. It sounds simple now, but a thousand years ago it would have been an incredible feat of imagination and imagery. All maps are drawn as though looking down. From a bird’s point of view. From their god’s point of view. Imagine being the first person to think of that. To be able to wrap their minds around a perspective they’d never seen. And then draw it.”

— Louise Penny

84. “What could be worse? Dying, and not being missed.”

— Louise Penny

85. “I had to learn compassion. Had to learn what it felt like to hate, and to forgive and to love and be loved. And to lose people close to me. Had to feel deep loneliness and sorrow. And then I could write.”

— Louise Penny

86. “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

87. “Maybe this was now normal for Olivier. Maybe every now and then he simply wept. Not in pain or sadness. The tears were just overwhelming memories, rendered into water, seeping out.”

— Louise Penny

88. “Everyone we meet, every word we speak, every action taken or not taken lives in our longhouse. With us. Always. Never to be expelled or locked away.”

— Louise Penny

89. “Her tragedy was that she always found men to save her. She never had to save herself. She never knew she could.”

— Louise Penny

90. “We choose our thoughts. We choose our perceptions. We choose our attitudes.”

— Louise Penny

91. “The sore point became their family legend, their myth, their legacy. What they lost became their most prized possession. Their inheritance.”

— Louise Penny

92. “Our lives are like a house. Some people are allowed on the lawn, some onto the porch, some get into the vestibule or kitchen. The better friends are invited deeper into our home, into our living room.”

— Louise Penny

93. “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

94. “You weren’t lost. You were exploring. There’s a difference.”

— Louise Penny

95. “This was the worst story yet. The phantom life that might have been.”

— Louise Penny

96. “After all, it’s how the light gets in.”

— Louise Penny

97. “Any real act of creation is first an act of destruction. Picasso said it, and it’s true. We don’t build on the old, we tear it down. And start fresh.”

— Louise Penny

98. “Most unhappiness comes from not being able to sit quietly in a room.”

— Louise Penny

99. “They’d crossed over to that continent where grieving parents lived. It looked the same as the rest of the world, but wasn’t. Colors bled pale. Music was just notes. Books no longer transported or comforted, not fully. Never again. Food was nutrition, little more. Breaths were sighs. And they knew something the rest didn’t. They knew how lucky the rest of the world was.”

— Louise Penny

100. “Sounds like being a therapist. People normally came into my office because something happened. Someone had died, or betrayed them. Their love wasn’t reciprocated. They’d lost a job. Gotten divorced. Something big. But the truth was, while that might’ve been the catalyst, the problem was almost always tiny and old and hidden.”

— Louise Penny