1
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 monstrous hate or bitterness or rancid resentments. It held love. Blinding, beautiful love.Louise Penny
2
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 added a long life of entitlement and disappointment, of privilege and pride. And the dagger she’d fashioned was taking a brief break from slashing her insides, and was now pointed outward.Louise Penny
3
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, security, ease. None of them come with money.Louise Penny
4
They spoke in semaphore, all punctuation unnecessary.“ You?”“ Great.” They’d trimmed the language to its essentials. Before long it would just be consonants. Then silence.Louise Penny
5
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 shores of a lake, isolated. Left to grow old, and odd.Louise Penny
6
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 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
7
We'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
8
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.Louise Penny
9
She 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
10
I 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
11
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.Louise Penny
12
…believing sarcasm and rude remarks kept the monsters at bay. They didn’t.Louise Penny
13
…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
14
Do you know the sums that I do?” “I count my blessings.Louise Penny
15
Do you know why we’re all happy here, monsieur? Because it’s the last house on the road.Louise Penny
16
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 own head and heart and seen what festered in the dark. And one day Jean Guy Beauvoir would look at his own monsters, and then be able to recognize others. And maybe this was the day and this was the case. He hoped so.Louise Penny