Top 450 Louise Penny Quotes (2025 Update)
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351. “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

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

— Louise Penny

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

— Louise Penny

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

— Louise Penny

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

— Louise Penny

356. “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

357. “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

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

— Louise Penny

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

— Louise Penny

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

— Louise Penny

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

— Louise Penny

362. “Do you know why we’re all happy here, monsieur? Because it’s the last house on the road.”

— Louise Penny

363. “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

364. “And she now knew the miracle wasn’t the banana, it was the hand that offered the banana.”

— Louise Penny

365. “Aid workers, when handing out food to starving people, quickly learn that the people fighting for it at the front are the people who need it least. It’s the people sitting quietly at the back, too weak to fight, who need it the most. And so too with tragedy.”

— Louise Penny

366. “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

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

— Louise Penny

368. “Since when do rabbits have eggs?’ Ruth persisted, looking at the bewildered villagers. ‘Never thought of that, eh? Where did it get them? Presumably from chocolate chickens. The bunny must have stolen the eggs from candy chickens who’re searching for their babies. Frantic.”

— Louise Penny

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

— Louise Penny

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

— Louise Penny

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

— Louise Penny

372. “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

373. “A belief of convenience isn’t much use, is it?”

— Louise Penny

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

— Louise Penny

375. “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

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

— Louise Penny

377. “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

378. “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

379. “Your brain is your weapon.”

— Louise Penny

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

— Louise Penny

381. “In my experience people who have been hurt either pass it on and become abusive themselves or they develop a great kindness.”

— Louise Penny

382. “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

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

— Louise Penny

384. “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

385. “In winter the very ground seemed to reach up and grab the elderly, yanking them to earth as though hungry for them. Shattering a hip or wrist, or neck. Best to take it slow.”

— Louise Penny

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

— Louise Penny

387. “Things sometimes fell apart unexpectedly. It was not necessarily a reflection of how much they were valued.”

— Louise Penny

388. “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

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. “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

391. “But wouldn’t people, his clients, realize? When there was no actual money in the account?” “How?” “When they asked for it.” “But people don’t,” she said. “They give it to their investment dealer, and at best they cash in the dividends or take the profits. But the capital remains in the account. Weren’t you ever told by your parents never to touch the capital?” “No. I was told not to touch my brother’s bike.”

— Louise Penny

392. “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

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

— Louise Penny

394. “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

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

— Louise Penny

396. “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

397. “A good novel is a good novel, pointe finale. And I think what I’m writing is exactly that.”

— Louise Penny

398. “And she knew that that was why drugs were so dangerous. Because they blew the mind. Not the heart. But the mind. And the heart followed. And the soul followed that.”

— Louise Penny

399. “Jews, gypsies, gays. It became normal and acceptable. No one told them what was happening was wrong. In fact, just the opposite.”

— Louise Penny

400. “Which was why, Gamache knew, it was vital to be aware of actions in the present. Because the present became the past, and the past grew. And got up, and followed you.”

— Louise Penny