Top 450 Louise Penny Quotes (2024 Update)
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401. “Every year the hunters shot cows and horses and family pets and each other. And unbelievably, they sometimes shot themselves, perhaps in a psychotic episode where they mistook themselves for dinner.”

— Louise Penny

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

— Louise Penny

403. “Sauve qui peut.”

— Louise Penny

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

— Louise Penny

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

— Louise Penny

406. “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

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

— Louise Penny

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

— Louise Penny

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

— Louise Penny

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

— Louise Penny

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

— Louise Penny

412. “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

413. “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

414. “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

415. “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

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

— Louise Penny

417. “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

418. “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

419. “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

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

— Louise Penny

421. “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

422. “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

423. “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

424. “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

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

— Louise Penny

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

— Louise Penny

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

— Louise Penny

428. “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

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

— Louise Penny

430. “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

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

— Louise Penny

432. “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

433. “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

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

— Louise Penny

435. “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

436. “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

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

— Louise Penny

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

— Louise Penny

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

— Louise Penny

440. “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

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

— Louise Penny

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

— Louise Penny

443. “You need to remember that, Jean-Guy. The blindness you mention isn’t believing in the essential goodness of people, it’s failing to see it.”

— Louise Penny

444. “Monarda was the zucchini of the flower world. It, too, figured prominently in the harvest market and, subsequently, the Thanksgiving bonfire, which would give off a hint of sweet bergamot so that it smelled as though every cottage in Three Pines was brewing Earl Grey tea.”

— Louise Penny

445. “Armand Gamache was never more glad he’d married this woman, who made his battles theirs.”

— Louise Penny

446. “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

447. “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

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

— Louise Penny

449. “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

450. “Do no harm was part of Hippocrates’s writing, but from a different text. On epidemics.”

— Louise Penny