Top 450 Louise Penny Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “Once again the fate of reckless youth was being decided by old men behind closed doors.”

— Louise Penny

252. “Fear might stop some people from committing murder, but he knew for certain fear was what drove most people to kill. It was what nested below all the other emotions. It was what twisted and turned the other emotions into something sick. It was an alchemist and could turn daylight into night, joy into despair. Fear, once taken root, blocked the sun. And Gamache knew what grew in that darkness. He searched for it every day.”

— Louise Penny

253. “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

254. “Gamache was the best of them, the smartest and bravest and strongest because he was willing to go into his own head alone, and open all the doors there, and enter all the dark rooms. And make friends with what he found there.”

— Louise Penny

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

— Louise Penny

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

— Louise Penny

257. “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

258. “Yes, I do. The ones who aren’t growing and evolving, who are standing still. They’re the ones who rarely got better.’ ‘Yes, that was it,’ said Gamache. ‘They waited for life to happen to them. They waited for someone to save them. Or heal them. They did nothing for themselves.’ ‘Ben,’ said Peter.”

— Louise Penny

259. “Be careful. You’re making hurting a habit. Spreading it around won’t lessen your pain, you know. Just the opposite.”

— Louise Penny

260. “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

261. “I’ve realised that anyone can be a critic but it takes a remarkable person to offer praise.”

— Louise Penny

262. “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

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

— Louise Penny

264. “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

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

— Louise Penny

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

— Louise Penny

267. “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

268. “Olivier looked at him blankly. But the Chief Inspector had seen that look before. It was, in fact, almost impossible to look blank. Unless the person wanted to. A blank face to the Chief Inspector meant a frantic mind.”

— Louise Penny

269. “Just because it’s the truth doesn’t make it less insulting.”

— Louise Penny

270. “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

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

— Louise Penny

272. “Anyone so damaged as to cause this much harm led a life full of secrets and full of enemies.”

— Louise Penny

273. “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

274. “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

275. “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

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

— Louise Penny

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

— Louise Penny

278. “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

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

— Louise Penny

280. “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

281. “The fault lies with us, and only us. It’s not fate, not genetics, not bad luck, and it’s definitely not Mom and Dad. Ultimately it’s us and our choices... but the most powerful spectacular thing is that the solution rests with us as well.”

— Louise Penny

282. “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

283. “Clara didn’t carry a grudge. They were too heavy and she had too far to go.”

— Louise Penny

284. “But being essentially a dumpster fire herself, she was familiar with flames.”

— Louise Penny

285. “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

286. “That’s a huge one, of course. Most of us are great with change, as long as it was our idea. But change imposed from the outside can send some people into a tailspin. I think Brother Albert hit it on the head. 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

287. “She wasn’t afraid to be wrong. And that, the Chief knew, was a great strength.”

— Louise Penny

288. “Dreadful deeds were obvious. The divine was often harder to see.”

— Louise Penny

289. “Gabri plugged the oven and the espresso machine into the generator,’ explained Olivier. ‘No lights, but we have the necessities.”

— Louise Penny

290. “He stared for ten seconds or more, which, when eating a chocolate cake isn’t much, but when staring, is.”

— Louise Penny

291. “They had such a profound effect on those who sang and heard them that the ancient chants became known as “the beautiful mystery.”

— Louise Penny

292. “I’m saying people change.” She held up her hands to ward off Clara’s protests. “I know, it’s easy to say. And it doesn’t undo the damage. But we’ve seen changes of heart. Changes of perception. It happens. Racists, homophobes, misogynists, they can change. And some do.” “Truth and reconciliation,” said Clara. “Yes. The truth must come first. And then, maybe, reconciliation. Maybe.”

— Louise Penny

293. “Maybe that’s what old men are for. To make decisions that no young man can.” He was watching Gamache closely. “Or should have to.”

— Louise Penny

294. “Homes, Gamache knew, were a self-portrait. A person’s choice of color, furnishing, pictures.”

— Louise Penny

295. “The morning after their deaths, Armand had gone into their room. The scent of them, the sense of them, almost too much to bear. The clothing. The book. The bookmark. The bedside clock, still ticking. He’d thought that strange. Surely it should have stopped.”

— Louise Penny

296. “There is no way either would get into their wedding clothes. But they’d grown in other ways as well, and Gamach figured it was a good deal. If life meant growth in all directions, it was fine with him.”

— Louise Penny

297. “We all have, she knew, a place where we’re not only most comfortable, but most competent.”

— Louise Penny

298. “I’ve seen enough successful writers who no longer seem to care when they are recognized with an award, and I think that’s just tragic.”

— Louise Penny

299. “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

300. “Yes, the real danger always came from the thing you couldn’t see.”

— Louise Penny