Top 450 Louise Penny Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “But Armand always said people react differently to death, and it was folly to judge anyone and double folly to judge what people do when faced with sudden, violent death. Murder. They weren’t themselves.”

— Louise Penny

252. “She picked up her book and tried to read but it was heavy in her hands. She struggled to hold it, wanting to finish the story, wanting to know how it ended. She was afraid she’d run out of time before she ran out of book.”

— Louise Penny

253. “No. It was almost impossible to electrocute someone these days, unless you were the governor of Texas.”

— Louise Penny

254. “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

255. “He was like an addict before a fix. Book freaks are like that, and not just old guys. Look at kids lining up for the latest installment of their favorite books. Stories, they’re addictive.” Gamache.”

— Louise Penny

256. “As far as the official mapmakers were concerned Three Pines didn’t exist. It had never been surveyed. Never plotted. No GPS or sat nav system, no matter how sophisticated, would ever find the little village. It only appeared as though by accident over the edge of the hill. Suddenly. It could not be found unless you were lost.”

— Louise Penny

257. “What kills can’t be seen, the Chief had warned Beauvoir. That’s what makes it so dangerous. It’s not a gun or a knife or a fist. It’s not anything you can see coming. It’s an emotion. Rancid, spoiled. And waiting for a chance to strike.”

— Louise Penny

258. “Plenty of time for a close friendship to turn to hate. As only a good friendship could. The conduit to the heart was already created.”

— Louise Penny

259. “And I would never, ever mock the power of love. But it can also distort. Slip over into desperation and delusion.”

— Louise Penny

260. “Once again the fate of reckless youth was being decided by old men behind closed doors.”

— Louise Penny

261. “And yet,’ Gamache continued in a pleasant voice, ’isn’t that what’s often taught in meditation? Not the absence of emotion, or swallowing them, but not allowing them to run the show?”

— Louise Penny

262. “Hell is the truth seen too late,” said Reine-Marie as she poured out more coffee. “Thomas Hobbes.”

— Louise Penny

263. “In grief people were themselves and not themselves.”

— Louise Penny

264. “Like the street his gallery was on, Fortin had an attractive front, hiding quite a foul interior. He was opportunistic. He fed on the talent of others. Got rich on the talent of others. While most of the artists themselves barely scraped by, and took all the risks.”

— Louise Penny

265. “What people do for power. How they’re willing to mutilate themselves, physically, intellectually, morally, for power and position.”

— Louise Penny

266. “The fault is here, but so is the solution. That’s the grace.”

— Louise Penny

267. “There is always a road back. If we have the courage to look for it, and take it.”

— Louise Penny

268. “Happy people didn’t drink themselves to sleep every night.”

— Louise Penny

269. “It was like walking into joy.”

— Louise Penny

270. “She did believe in God. And she believed that Jane was with him. And suddenly her pain and grief became human and natural. And survivable. She had a place to put it, a place where Jane was with God. It was such a relief. She looked.”

— Louise Penny

271. “Irene Finney, like many very elderly people, knew that the world was indeed flat. It had a beginning and an end. And she had come to the edge.”

— Louise Penny

272. “Rumors are hard to prove, but they’re even harder to disprove. We both know that character assassination is easy. All it takes is a suggestion. A well-placed word in someone’s ear.”

— Louise Penny

273. “Not everything needed to be brought into the light, he knew. Not every truth needed to be told.”

— Louise Penny

274. “In time, it wasn’t all that long ago, but measured in events, it was an eternity.”

— Louise Penny

275. “Chief Inspector Gamache knew one thing about hate. It bound you forever to the person you hated.”

— Louise Penny

276. “As they trudged through the snow toward Clara’s pretty little cottage, Ruth lost her footing. Haniya grabbed her before she fell. She held Ruth’s hand for the rest of the way, and wondered if maybe the key was not in being held, but in holding.”

— Louise Penny

277. “Each day they tracked down killers. Each day they put their own lives on the line. And in return they were scapegoated. Chained to the ground, food for politicians looking for reelection.”

— Louise Penny

278. “Three craggy pine trees had stood at the far end of the green for as long as anyone remembered, like wise men who’d found what they were looking for.”

— Louise Penny

279. “The Chief had once told him about the behavior of gorillas when faced with an attack. They met it head on, staring down the enemy. But every now and then they’d reach out to touch the gorilla beside them. To make sure they were not alone. Keeping his eyes on the road, Jean-Guy reached out and touched Gamache’s shoulder.”

— Louise Penny

280. “You do know that the earth is round.” “The earth might be, but human nature isn’t. It has caverns and abysses and all sorts of traps.”

— Louise Penny

281. “Go now to your dwelling place to enter into the days of your togetherness. And may your days be good and long upon the earth.”

— Louise Penny

282. “Tea lights were lit and placed on the table and around the garden, so that it looked like large fireflies had settled in for the evening.”

— Louise Penny

283. “They don’t teach this at medical school, but I’ve seen it in real life. People dying in bits and pieces. A series of petites morts. Little deaths. They lose their sight, their hearing, their independence. Those are the physical ones. But there’re others. Less obvious, but more fatal. They lose heart. They lose hope. They lose faith. They lose interest. And finally, they lose themselves.”

— Louise Penny

284. “Unlike most of us, who tend to be transparent, people rarely see through a psychopath,” she continued. “He’s masterful. People trust and believe him. Even like him. It’s his great skill. Convincing people that his point of view is legitimate and right, often when all the evidence points in the other direction. Like Iago. It’s a kind of magic.”

— Louise Penny

285. “But sometimes that comfort was an illusion. Masquerading as protecting, while actually imprisoning.”

— Louise Penny

286. “Gamache had been to Three Pines on previous investigations and each time he’d had the feeling he belonged. It was a powerful feeling. After all, what else did people really want except to belong? He.”

— Louise Penny

287. “Before laptops and BlackBerries and all the other tools that mistook information for knowledge. It was an old library, filled with old books and dusty old thoughts.”

— Louise Penny

288. “In my teens my drug of choice was acceptance, in my twenties it was approval, in my thirties it was love, in my forties it was Scotch. That lasted a while,’ she admitted. ‘Now all I really crave is a good bowel movement.”

— Louise Penny

289. “Character is not created in times like these. It’s revealed.”

— Louise Penny

290. “It was one thing to forgive, it was another to climb back into the cage with that bear, even if it was wearing a tutu and smiling.”

— Louise Penny

291. “Far greater than Gamache’s anger was his caring.”

— Louise Penny

292. “The senior council couldn’t allow me to disobey orders and get away with it. This is their punishment. And it’s right. Just as what I did was right.”

— Louise Penny

293. “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

294. “Everyday for Lucy’s entire dog life Jane had sliced a banana for breakfast and had miraculously dropped one of the perfect disks on to the floor where it sat for an instant before being gobbled up. Every morning Lucy’s prayers were answered, confirming her belief that God was old and clumsy and smelt like roses and lived in the kitchen. But no more. Lucy knew her God was dead. And she now knew the miracle wasn’t the banana, it was the hand that offered the banana.”

— Louise Penny

295. “Their lives could not be defined by their deaths. They belonged not in perpetual pain but in the beauty of their short lives.”

— Louise Penny

296. “People instinctively let down their guard when they saw a limp, an illness, a flaw in someone else. Not out of compassion but because it made them feel superior. Stronger. Those people, Gamache knew, did not always last long. It was not a useful instinct.”

— Louise Penny

297. “He now knew that happiness and kindness went together.”

— Louise Penny

298. “I think you might try leading your life as though it’s just you. If he comes back and you know your life will be better with him, then great. But you’ll also know you’re enough on your own.”

— Louise Penny

299. “There was nothing right or good in dying for your country. A necessity, sometimes, yes. But always a tragedy. Not an aspiration.”

— Louise Penny

300. “Sauve qui peut.”

— Louise Penny