Top 450 Louise Penny Quotes (2026 Update)
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351. “We knew who would want him found, Dr Croix, but who wants him to remain buried?”

— Louise Penny

352. “But I understand your doubts. They’re what make you a great man, not your certainties.”

— Louise Penny

353. “All will be as it should, if we just do our best.”

— Louise Penny

354. “Some so weighty we carry them our whole lives. They can blight our very existence, or they can make us stronger. They can make us bitter or teach us compassion. They can drive us to do things we never thought ourselves capable of. Wonderful achievements, like becoming Chief Inspector and Commander. Or horrific things. Terrible dark deeds.”

— Louise Penny

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

— Louise Penny

356. “It was no use telling her he understood. Or that it was all right. She’d earned the right to no easy answer.”

— Louise Penny

357. “Good hearts get hurt. Good hearts get broken, Armand. And then they lash out.”

— Louise Penny

358. “Love and worry. They went hand in hand. Fellow travelers.”

— Louise Penny

359. “Entitlement was, she knew, a terrible thing. It chained the person to their victimhood. It gobbled up all the air around it. Until the person lived in a vacuum, where nothing good could flourish.”

— Louise Penny

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

— Louise Penny

361. “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

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

— Louise Penny

363. “Hope offered, then denied. A particular cruelty.”

— Louise Penny

364. “But he also knew praying was more to steady the person than inform the deity.”

— Louise Penny

365. “They kill. To feel safe. It almost never worked.”

— Louise Penny

366. “Ruth believed in precycling. An evolution on recycling. She made use of things before people threw them out.”

— Louise Penny

367. “We can all fall,” said the abbot. “But perhaps not as hard and not as fast and not as far as someone who spends his life on the ascent.”

— Louise Penny

368. “In winter the very ground seemed to reach up and grab the elderly, yanking them to earth as though hungry for them.”

— Louise Penny

369. “Dear God, thought Gamache, save me from a huffy priest.”

— Louise Penny

370. “He inhaled deeply and exhaled the word “people.” Not so much an indictment as in wonderment. That there could be so much deliberate cruelty and so much kindness in one species.”

— Louise Penny

371. “Things were pretty dire when Ruth was the healing agent.”

— Louise Penny

372. “Photos sat on the piano and shelves bulged with books, testament to a life well lived.”

— Louise Penny

373. “It was, he knew, a sign of End of Days. Ruth refusing booze.”

— Louise Penny

374. “They’re angry. Unstable. And no doubt armed.”

— Louise Penny

375. “Most of us are great with change, as long as it was our idea.”

— Louise Penny

376. “Four days. And she had two gay sons, a large black mother, a demented poet for a friend and was considering getting a duck. It was not what she’d expected from this visit.”

— Louise Penny

377. “He often said that words told them what someone was thinking, but the tone told them how they felt.”

— Louise Penny

378. “That’s what I believe,” said Ruth. “Peter didn’t. Here was a man who was given everything. Talent, love, a peaceful place to live and create. And all he had to do was appreciate it.” “And if he didn’t?” “He would remain stone. And the deities would turn on him. They do, you know. They’re generous, but they demand gratitude.”

— Louise Penny

379. “This was the great benefit of seeing worse. Fewer things worried him now.”

— Louise Penny

380. “If less was more, she had a great deal.”

— Louise Penny

381. “Ruth whacked the seat beside her on the sofa, in what could only be interpreted as an invitation. It was like receiving a personalized Molotov cocktail. Gamache.”

— Louise Penny

382. “Entitlement was, she knew, a terrible thing. It chained the person to their victimhood. It gobbled up all the air around it. Until the person lived in a vacuum, where nothing good could flourish. And the tragedy was almost always compounded, Myrna knew. These people invariably passed it on from generation to generation. Magnified each time. The sore point became their family legend, their myth, their legacy. What they lost became their most prized possession. Their inheritance.”

— Louise Penny

383. “The two women would ‘put up’ the preserves over a couple of days and invariably Marthe would ask, ‘When does a cucumber become a pickle?’ At first he’d tried to answer that question as though she genuinely wanted to know. But over the years he realised there was no answer. At what point does change happen? Sometimes it’s sudden. The ‘ah ha’ moments in our lives, when we suddenly see. But often it’s a gradual change, an evolution.”

— Louise Penny

384. “Clara tried to give the eulogy, but couldn’t speak. Her words stuck at the lump in her throat. And so Myrna took over, holding her hand while Clara stood beside her.”

— Louise Penny

385. “And now here is my secret, a very simple secret. It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

— Louise Penny

386. “Their creations eventually die of neglect, of malnourishment. And sometimes, when that happens the artist also dies.”

— Louise Penny

387. “She was stuffing her innards back. Sewing herself up, putting her skin, her make-up, her party frock back on.”

— Louise Penny

388. “She threw great logs of ‘I’m right, you’re an unfeeling bastard’ on to the fire and felt secure and comforted.”

— Louise Penny

389. “They were home. He always felt a bit like a snail, but instead of carrying his home on his back, he carried it in his arms.”

— Louise Penny

390. “Your brain is your weapon.”

— Louise Penny

391. “While there were few things more terrifying than being outside in a blizzard, there were few things more comforting than being inside.”

— Louise Penny

392. “It’s vital to hear your own language, to see it written, to see it valued.”

— Louise Penny

393. “But Annie hates children.” “Well, she’s not very good with them, but I don’t think she hates them. She adores Florence and Zora.” “She has to,” said Beauvoir. “They’re family. She’s probably depending on them, in her old age. She’ll be bitter Auntie Annie, with the stale chocolates and the doorknob collection. And they’ll have to look after her. So she can’t drop them on their heads now.”

— Louise Penny

394. “We see it when bullies are in charge. It becomes part of the culture of an institution, a family, an ethnic group, a country. It becomes not just acceptable, but expected. Applauded even.”

— Louise Penny

395. “Their reasons are their own,’ he finally said. ‘I don’t have to care.”

— Louise Penny

396. “But privately Reine-Marie wondered. Wondered whether what people did in a crisis was, in fact, their real selves. Stripped of artifice and social training. It was easy enough to be decent when all was going your way. It was another matter to be decent when all hell was breaking loose.”

— Louise Penny

397. “A lie was a light. One that grew into a floodlight, that eventually illuminated the person among them with the biggest secret. The most to hide.”

— Louise Penny

398. “This part of rue Ste.-Catherine wasn’t so much an artery as an intestine.”

— Louise Penny

399. “Yes, facts were necessary. But frankly, anyone could be trained to collect a bloodstain or find a hair. Or an affair. Or a bank balance that didn’t balance. But feelings? Only the bravest wandered into that fiery realm.”

— Louise Penny

400. “This used to be my drug of choice. 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.”

— Louise Penny