"Joy doesn't ever leave, you know. It's always with you. And one day you'll find it again."
- Louise Penny
"All Armand’s life Honoré had lived in light. Unchallenged….Armand put out his hand, and touched the door. The last room, the last door [in the longhouse]. The last territory to explore didn't hold mon..."
"Now here's a good one:you're lying on your deathbed.You have one hour to live.Who is it, exactly, you have neededall these years to forgive?"
"…struck. Once. And into that blow he put his childhood, his grief, his loss. He put his mother’s sorrow and his sister’s longing. The menorah, weighed down with that, crushed the Hermit’s skull."
"Loss was like that, Gamache knew. You didn't just lose a loved one. You lost your heart, your memories, your laughter, your brain and it even took your bones. Eventually it all came back, but differen..."
"They'd crossed over to that continent where grieving parents lived. It looked the same as the rest of the world, but wasn't. Colors bled pale. Music was just notes. Books no longer transported or comf..."
"Grief was dagger-shaped and sharp and pointed inward. It was made of fresh loss and old sorrow. Rendered and forged and sometimes polished. Irene Finney had taken her daughter’s death and to that sorr..."
"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."
"She knew that kindness kills. All her life she'd suspected this and so she'd only ever been cold and cruel. She'd faced kindness with cutting remarks. She'd curled her lips at smiling faces. She'd twi..."
"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."