Top 450 Louise Penny Quotes (2026 Update)
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251. “While Henri had a huge heart, he had quite a modest brain. His head was taken up almost entirely by his ears. In fact, his head seemed simply a sort of mount for those ears. Fortunately Henri didn’t really need his head. He kept all the important things in his heart.”

— Louise Penny

252. “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

253. “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

254. “If kind acts could protect us from tragedy, thought Lacoste, the world would be a kinder place.”

— Louise Penny

255. “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

256. “It was funny how obsessed people believed others equally obsessed, or even interested.”

— Louise Penny

257. “Everything he let go of had claw marks on it.”

— Louise Penny

258. “The Chief believed if you sift through evil, at the very bottom you’ll find good. He believed that evil has its limits. Beauvoir didn’t. He believed that if you sift through good, you’ll find evil. Without borders, without brakes, without limit.”

— Louise Penny

259. “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

260. “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

261. “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

262. “It wasn’t really, he knew, about less fear. It was about more courage.”

— Louise Penny

263. “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

264. “Gamache enjoyed going to churches for their music and the beauty of the language and the stillness. But he felt closer to God in his Volvo.”

— Louise Penny

265. “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

266. “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

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

— Louise Penny

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

— Louise Penny

269. “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

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

— Louise Penny

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

— Louise Penny

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

— Louise Penny

273. “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

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

— Louise Penny

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

— Louise Penny

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

— Louise Penny

277. “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

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. “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

280. “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

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

— Louise Penny

282. “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

283. “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

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

— Louise Penny

285. “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

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. “At my age I’ve long since stopped caring what others think.”

— Louise Penny

288. “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

289. “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

290. “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

291. “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

292. “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

293. “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

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

— Louise Penny

295. “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

296. “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

297. “Rummaging through the cupboard like a wartime surgeon frantically searching for the right bandage, Peter swept aside Yogi Tea and Harmony Herbal Blend, though he hesitated for a second over chamomile. But no. Stay focused, he admonished himself. He knew it was there, that opiate of the Anglos. And his hand clutched the box just as the kettle whistled. Violent death demanded Earl Grey.”

— Louise Penny

298. “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

299. “Clara rocked back and forth, back and forth, cradling her loss. Earlier in the day she’d felt someone had scooped her heart and her brain right out of her body. Now they were back, but they were broken. Her brain jumped madly about the place, but always back to that one scorched spot.”

— Louise Penny

300. “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