Top 450 Louise Penny Quotes (2024 Update)
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401. “It would be natural for some to feel that pressure and choose speed over quality. And try to hide it when something goes wrong. Not because they’re bad people, but because they’re people. That way lies tragedy.”

— Louise Penny

402. “She’d arrived a self-sufficient city woman, and now she was covered in snow, sitting on a bench beside a crazy person, and she had a duck on her lap. Who was nuts now?”

— Louise Penny

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

— Louise Penny

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

— Louise Penny

405. “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

406. “You need to know this. Everything makes sense. Everything. We just don’t know how yet.”

— Louise Penny

407. “But then, Armand Gamache thought, where else would you find darkness but right up against the light? What greater triumph for evil than to ruin a garden?”

— Louise Penny

408. “The terror of falling asleep knowing that on waking she’d relive the loss, like Prometheus bound and tormented each day. Everything had changed. Even her grammar. Suddenly she lived in the past tense. And the singular.”

— Louise Penny

409. “It’s important, Madeleine, not to cut people out of our lives. Isolation doesn’t make us better at our job. It makes us weaker, more vulnerable.”

— Louise Penny

410. “Jeez,” said Beauvoir. “The Inquisition. I didn’t expect that.” “No one does,” said Gamache.”

— Louise Penny

411. “The trial is about facts, but feelings are also a fact.”

— Louise Penny

412. “He was reminded again what Abbie Hoffman had said: We must eat what we kill. That would put an end to war.”

— Louise Penny

413. “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

414. “She was beginning to see how quickly something completely normal could suddenly seem sinister, if you chose to see it that way.”

— Louise Penny

415. “Not a spoon clinked against a mug, not a creamer was popped, peeled and opened, not a breath. It was as though something else had joined them then. As though silence had taken a seat.”

— Louise Penny

416. “What’s the use of healing, if the life that’s saved is callow and selfish and ruled by fear? There’s a difference between being in sanctuary and being in hiding.” “So you have to leave sanctuary in order to have it?” she asked.”

— Louise Penny

417. “The drug smuggling today had, as its godparents, the bootleggers nearly a hundred years ago. The syndicates, the systems, the psyches were created back then.”

— Louise Penny

418. “Gamache nodded. It was what made his job so fascinating, and so difficult. How the same person could be both kind and cruel, compassionate and wretched. Unraveling a murder was more about getting to know the people than the evidence. People who were contrary and contradictory, and who often didn’t even know themselves.”

— Louise Penny

419. “Happiness as an act of defiance. A revolutionary act.”

— Louise Penny

420. “Are you enjoying your suffering? You must be, to hold on to it so tightly.”

— Louise Penny

421. “And her arms would open wide, in welcome. It seemed involuntary, as though her mother were exposing her heart to her daughter.”

— Louise Penny

422. “Jean Guy Beauvoir was loosely wrapped but tightly wound.”

— Louise Penny

423. “She’d never actually smiled at a family reunion before. It felt odd.”

— Louise Penny

424. “There’s something about her, something bitter, that resents happiness in others, and needs to ruin it. That’s probably what makes her a great poet, she knows what it is to suffer. She gathers suffering to her. Collects it, and sometimes creates it.”

— Louise Penny

425. “That’s why I made the muffins from rose water, as a homage to Jane. Then I ate them, as you saw. I always eat my pain.’ Gabri smiled slightly. Looking at the size of the man, Gamache marveled at the amount of pain he must have.”

— Louise Penny

426. “That was why she was happy. He now knew that happiness ad kindness went together. There was not one without the other. For Jean-Guy it was a struggle. For Annie it seemed natural.”

— Louise Penny

427. “All year his mouth watered for the home-made Manoir Bellechasse lemonade. It tasted fresh and clean, sweet and tart. It tasted of sunshine and summer.”

— Louise Penny

428. “Champlain missing was so much more potent than Champlain found.”

— Louise Penny

429. “You’re wrong there,’ said Ruth, following Myrna’s gaze. ‘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. That lasted a while,’ she admitted. ‘Now all I really crave is a good bowel movement.”

— Louise Penny

430. “That any decent person would’ve refused to participate in the Holocaust.”

— Louise Penny

431. “We love life, thought Reine-Marie as she watched Ruth and Rosa sitting side by side, not because we are used to living, but because we are used to loving. Nietzsche. How Armand would kid her if he knew she was quoting Nietzsche, even to herself.”

— Louise Penny

432. “Professor Robinson was revealing, not creating, the anger. The fear. And yes, perhaps even the cowardice they kept hidden away. She was like some genetic mutation awakening illnesses that would have normally lain dormant.”

— Louise Penny

433. “A murder was never about brawn, it began and ended in the brain and the brain could justify anything.”

— Louise Penny

434. “I don’t know, Armand. It made me sick. And sad. And glad I live far – ” “From the madding crowd?” Vincent Gilbert smiled and nodded. “Yes. I peek out every now and then, then scuttle back to my little cabin, where I hope so-called civilization won’t find me.”

— Louise Penny

435. “As a diversion, few things were as effective as chocolate cake.”

— Louise Penny

436. “He knew in his heart that anything that offered such peace had great value.”

— Louise Penny

437. “What is essential is invisible to the eye. Knowledge, ideas, thoughts. Imagination. All invisible. All lived in libraries. But.”

— Louise Penny

438. “All shall be well. And all shall be well. And all manner of thing shall be well. It was a quote from one of Gamache’s favorite writers, the Christian mystic Julian of Norwich. Who’d offered hope in a time of great suffering.”

— Louise Penny

439. “No learning curve at all, marveled Gamache. But he realized Henri already knew all he’d ever need. He knew he was loved. And he knew how to love.”

— Louise Penny

440. “He took her in his arms and kissed her, feeling her soft body beneath his coat. They’d both swelled since they’d first met. There was no way either would get into their wedding clothes. But they’d grown in other ways as well, and Gamache figured it was a good deal. If life meant growth in all directions, it was fine with him.”

— Louise Penny

441. “We just don’t know. The key is to keep going. Joy might be just around the corner.”

— Louise Penny

442. “You’re not quite as ignorant as you pretend, Chief Inspector.” “Oh, my ignorance knows no bounds, Father.”

— Louise Penny

443. “The mixture of cafe au lait and impatience was producing an exquisite vibration.”

— Louise Penny

444. “I saw it with my clients who’d been abused either physically or emotionally. The relationship never starts with a fist to the face, or an insult. If it did there’d be no second date. It always starts gently. Kindly. The other person draws you in. To trust them. To need them. And then they slowly turn. Little by little, increasing the heat. Until you’re trapped.”

— Louise Penny

445. “If stupid was sand, he’d be half the Sahara.”

— Louise Penny

446. “Clara found it easy to forgive most things in most people. Too easy, her husband Peter often warned. But Clara had her own little secret. She didn’t really let go of everything. Most things, yes. But some she secretly held and hugged and would visit in moments when she needed to be comforted by the unkindness of others.”

— Louise Penny

447. “They all had them. Secrets. But some stank more than others.”

— Louise Penny

448. “We long to find home. After years and years of making war on everyone around us, on ourselves, we just want peace.’ ‘And.”

— Louise Penny

449. “What the village in the valley offered was a place to heal. It offered company and companionship, in life and at the end of life. It offered a surefire cure for loneliness.”

— Louise Penny

450. “Who made the rule that people shouldn’t eat or drink in a church?” So they’d tried it. At first it felt awkward, wrong. As though God would be offended if people took a meal in his house. Until they realized that the sacrilege wasn’t eating and talking and laughing in the chapel. It was leaving it empty.”

— Louise Penny