Top 450 Louise Penny Quotes (2026 Update)
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251. “It was funny how obsessed people believed others equally obsessed, or even interested.”

— Louise Penny

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

— Louise Penny

253. “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

254. “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

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

— Louise Penny

257. “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

258. “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

259. “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

260. “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

261. “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

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

— Louise Penny

263. “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

264. “At this discovery Matthew Croft’s legs gave way and he sank to the cold concrete floor, to a place no rhyming verse existed. He had finally been hurt beyond poetry.”

— Louise Penny

265. “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

266. “When I miss things or let them pass they gather in a heap then rise up and take a life. So, I try not to.”

— Louise Penny

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

— Louise Penny

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

— Louise Penny

269. “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

270. “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

271. “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

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

— Louise Penny

274. “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

275. “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

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

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

— Louise Penny

279. “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

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

— Louise Penny

281. “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

282. “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

283. “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

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

— Louise Penny

285. “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

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

— Louise Penny

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

— Louise Penny

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

— Louise Penny

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

— Louise Penny

290. “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

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

— Louise Penny

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

— Louise Penny

293. “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

294. “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

295. “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

296. “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

297. “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

298. “Sauve qui peut.”

— Louise Penny

299. “But he knew he needn’t worry. This man was afraid of nothing. “I count my blessings.” He turned and saw Irene on the terrasse, as though he’d sensed her there. “We’re all blessed and we’re all blighted, Chief Inspector,” said Finney. “Every day each of us does our sums. The question is, what do we count?” The old man brought his hand to his head and removed his hat, offering it to Gamache.”

— Louise Penny

300. “Armand Gamache had seen the worst. But he’d also seen the best. Often in the same person.”

— Louise Penny