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 twisted...

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...

I was tired of seeing the Graces always depicted as beautiful young things. I think wisdom comes with age and life and pain. And knowing what matters.

I often think we should have tattooed on the back of whatever hand we use to shoot or write, “I might be wrong.

Chief Superintendent Arnot might hold power, but Armand Gamache was the more powerful man.

But 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...

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.

Houses 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...

Irene Finney, like many very elderly people, knew that the world was indeed flat. It had a beginning and an end. And she had come to the edge.

Life is choice. All day, everyday. Who we talk to, where we sit, what we say, how we say it. And our lives become defined by our choices. It’s as simple and as complex as...

The only thing money really buys?…Space. A bigger house, a bigger car, a larger hotel room. First-class plane tickets. But it doesn’t even buy comfort. No one complains more than the rich and entitled. Comfort,...

Our lives are like a house. Some people are allowed on the lawn, some onto the porch, some get into the vestibule or the kitchen. The better friends are invited deeper into our home, into...

I’ve been treating you with courtesy and respect because that’s the way I choose to treat everyone. But never, ever mistake kindness with weakness.

I was free. Milton was right…the mind is its own place. I was never a prisoner. Not then, not now.

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

Wait, 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...

Joy doesn’t ever leave, you know. It’s always with you. And one day you’ll find it again.

Beauvoir was quiet, watching the Chief, taking in the gleam in his eye, the enthusiasm as he described what he’d found. Not the physical landscape, but the emotional. The intellectual.Many might have thought the Chief...

To be silent. In hopes of not offending, in hopes of being accepted. But what happened to people who never spoke, never raised their voices? Kept everything inside?Gamache knew what happened. Everything they swallowed, every...

…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...

Normally death came at night, taking a person in their sleep, stopping their heart or tickling them awake, leading them to the bathroom with a splitting headache before pouncing and flooding their brain with blood....

Murder 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...

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 comforted,...

I count my blessings.

They stared ahead. Silent. Morin had never realized murderers were caught in silence. But they were.

He’d shoved his toque and mitts into the sleeve of his parka when he’d come in the night before, and now, thrusting his right arm into the armhole, he hit the blockage. At a practiced...

Let every man shovel out his own snow, and the whole city will be passable,” said Gamache. Seeing Beauvoir’s puzzled expression he added, “Emerson.””Lake and Palmer?””Ralph and Waldo.

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.

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 sorrow she’d...

Don’t mistake dramatics for a conscience.

And Beauvoir knew then the man was a saint. He’s been touched by any number of medical men and women. All healers, all well intentioned, some kind, some rough. All made it clear they wanted...

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

Eventually he’d let the answering machine take over and had hidden in his studio. Where he’s hidden all his life. From the monster. He could feel itin their bedroom now. He could feel its tail...

The 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...

Great.”They’d trimmed the language to its essentials. Before long it would just be consonants. Then silence.

Gamache 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...

What killed people wasn’t a bullet, a blade, a fist to the face. What killed people was a feeling. Left too long. Sometimes in the cold, frozen. Sometimes buried and fetid. And sometimes on the...

Her voice was flat, in a way Myrna recognized from years of listening to people trying to rein in their emotions. To squash them down, flatten, them, and with them their words and their voices....

Life is change. If you aren’t growing and evolving you’re standing still, and the rest of the world is surging ahead. Most of these people are very immature. They lead “still” lives, waiting.

Rules 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.

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?

The reason Armand Gamache could go there was because it wasn’t totally foreign to him. He knew it because he’d seen his own burned terrain, he’d walked off the familiar and comfortable path inside his...

I just sit where I’m put, composedof stone and wishful thinking:that the deity who kills for pleasurewill also heal,that in the midst of your nightmare,the final one, a kind lionwill come with bandages in her...

When someone stabs you it’s not your fault that you feel pain.

. .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.

Beauvoir left their home wanting to call his wife and tell her how much he loved her, and then tell her what he believed in, and his fears and hopes and disappointments. To talk about...

Peter swept aside Yogi Tea and Harmony Herbal Blend, though he hesitated a second over the chamomile. …. But no. Violent death demanded Earl Grey.

But we don’t have to react. That’s what I’m saying. A police force, like a government, should be above that. Just because we’re provoked doesn’t mean we have to act. — Still Life

…the pain of neuralgia…she knew what they thought. That she was cold. Couldn’t feel. But in fact she felt too much. Too deeply.

…believing sarcasm and rude remarks kept the monsters at bay. They didn’t.