01c. 1958 ADThe fault lies with us, and only us. It's not fate, not genetics, not bad luck, and it's definitely not Mom and Dad. Ultimately it's us and our choices...but the most powerful spectacular thing is that the solution rests with us as well.Louise Penny / quote ↗
02c. 1958 ADGamache 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 / quote ↗
03c. 1958 ADMurder was deeply human. A person was killed and a person killed. And what powered the final thrust wasn't a whim, wasn't an event. It was an emotion. Something once healthy and human had become wretched and bloated and finally buried. But not put to rest. It lay there, often for decades, feeding on itself, growing and gnawing, grim and full of grievance. Until it finally broke free of all human restraint. Not conscience, not fear, not social convention could contain it. When that happened, all hell broke loose. And a man became a monster.Louise Penny / quote ↗
04c. 1958 ADI often think we should have tattooed on the back of whatever hand we use to shoot or write, 'I might be wrong.Louise Penny / quote ↗
05c. 1958 ADWe're all blessed and we're all blighted, Chief Inspector," said Finney. "Everyday each of us does our sums. The question is, what do we count?Louise Penny / quote ↗
06c. 1958 ADBut you knew what would happen. Why would you choose to walk right into a situation where you know the person is going to be hurtful? It kills me to see you do that, and you do it all the time. It's like a form of insanity. - Peter MorrowYou call it insanity, I call it optimism. - Clara MorrowLouise Penny / quote ↗
07c. 1958 ADHomes, Gamache knew, were a self portrait. A person's choice of color, furnishing, pictures, every touch revealed the individual. God, or the devil, was in the details. And so was the human. Was it dirty, messy, obsessively clean? Were the decorations chosen to impress, or were they a hodgepodge of personal history? Was the space cluttered or clear? He felt a thrill every time he entered a home during an investigation.Louise Penny / quote ↗
08c. 1958 ADPhotos sat on the piano and shelves bulged with books, testament to a life well lived.Louise Penny / quote ↗
09c. 1958 ADThey 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 / quote ↗
10c. 1958 ADWait, Armand, he heard behind him but kept walking, ignoring the calls. Then he remembered what Emile had meant to him and still did. Did this one bad thing wipe everything else out?That was the danger. Not that betrayals happened, not that cruel things happened, but that they could outweigh all the good. That we could forget the good and only remember the bad.But not today. Gamache stopped.Louise Penny / quote ↗
11c. 1958 ADShe taught me that life goes on, and that I had a choice. To lament what I no longer had or be grateful for what remained.Louise Penny / quote ↗
12c. 1958 AD. .his cell phone didn't work in Three Pines, and neither did email. He almost expected to see messages fluttering back and forth in the sky above the village, unable to descend.Louise Penny / quote ↗
13c. 1958 ADLife is change. If you aren't growing and evolving, you're standing still, and the rest of the world is surging ahead.Louise Penny / quote ↗
14c. 1958 ADWhen Olivier had been taken away Gamache had sat back down and stared at the sack. what could be worse than Chaos, Despair, War?What would even the Mountain flee from? Gamache had given it a lot of thought.What haunted people even, perhaps especially, on their deathbed? What chased them, tortured them and brought some of them to their knees? And Gamache thought he had the answer.Regret. Regret for things said, for things done, and not done. Regret for the people they might have been. And failed to be.Finally, when he was alone, the Chief Inspector had opened the sack and looking inside had realize he'd been wrong. The worst thing of all wasn't regret.Louise Penny / quote ↗
15c. 1958 ADI saw a lot of men die there. Most men. Do you know what killed them?”…”Despair,” said Finney. “They believed themselves to be prisoners. I lived with those men, ate the same maggot-infested food, slept in the same beds, did the same back-breaking work. But they died and I lived. Do you know why?” “You were free.” “I was free. Milton was right…the mind is its own place. I was never a prisoner. Not then, not now.Louise Penny / quote ↗
16c. 1958 ADThe bistro was his secret weapon in tracking down murderers. Not just in Three Pines, but in every town and village in Quebec. First he found a comfortable café or brasserie, or bistro, then he found the murderer. Because Armand Gamache knew something many of his colleagues never figured out. Murder was deeply human, the murdered and the murderer. To describe the murderer as a monstrosity, a grotesque, was to give him an unfair advantage. No. Murderers were human, and at the root of each murder was an emotion. Warped, no doubt. Twisted and ugly. But an emotion. And one so powerful it had driven a man to make a ghost.Gamache's job was to collect the evidence, but also to collect the emotions. And the only way he knew to do that was do get to know the people. To watch and listen. To pay attention, and the best way to do that was in a deceptively casual way in a deceptively casual setting.Like the bistro.Louise Penny / quote ↗
17c. 1958 ADRules meant order. Without them they’d be killing each other. It began with butting in, with parking in disabled spaces, with smoking in elevators. And it ended in murder.Louise Penny / quote ↗
18c. 1958 ADA murder was never about brawn, it began and ended in the brain and the brain could justify anything.Louise Penny / quote ↗
19c. 1958 AD…believing sarcasm and rude remarks kept the monsters at bay. They didn’t.Louise Penny / quote ↗
21c. 1958 ADHouses are like people, Agent Lemieux. They have secrets. I'll tell you something I've learned.'Armand Gamache dropped his voice so that Agent Lemieux had to strain to hear.'Do you know what makes us sick, Agent Lemieux?'Lemieux shook his head. Then out of the darkness and stillness he heard the answer.'It's our secrets that make us sick.Louise Penny / quote ↗
22c. 1958 AD…the most devastating thing Finney could have said. Not that Peter was hated by his father. But that he’d been loved all along. He’d interpreted kindness as cruelty, generosity as meanness, support as tethers. How horrible to have been offered love, and to have chosen hate instead. He’d turned heaven into hell.Louise Penny / quote ↗
23c. 1958 ADGamache watched the old poet. He knew what was looming behind the Mountain. What crushed all before it. The thing the Hermit most feared. The Mountain most feared.Conscience....Which is 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.And found you ...Who wouldn't be afraid of this?Louise Penny / quote ↗
24c. 1958 ADWe have a solemn pact.' Kaye nodded to Mother and looked over at Em talking to some neighbors. 'If one of us is unconscious in the hospital, the others will make sure it's pulled.''The plug?' Ruth asked.'The chin hair,' said Kaye, eyeing Ruth with some alarm. 'You're off the visitors list. Mother, make a note.Louise Penny / quote ↗
