Quotes from Glass Houses

“Three Pines is a state of mind. When we choose tolerance over hate. Kindness over cruelty. Goodness over bullying. When we choose to be hopeful, not cynical. Then we live in Three Pines.”
― Louise Penny, quote from Glass Houses

“We see it when bullies are in charge. It becomes part of the culture of an institution, a family, an ethnic group, a country. It becomes not just acceptable, but expected. Applauded even.”
― Louise Penny, quote from Glass Houses

“It wasn’t really, he knew, about less fear. It was about more courage.”
― Louise Penny, quote from Glass Houses

“November was the transition month. A sort of purgatory. It was the cold damp breath between dying and death. Between fall and the dead of winter.”
― Louise Penny, quote from Glass Houses

“Jesus, is Gamache hiring fetuses now?”
― Louise Penny, quote from Glass Houses

“the Maori and their haka. It is death. It is death, they chant. To terrify, to petrify.”
― Louise Penny, quote from Glass Houses

“Yes, facts were necessary. But frankly, anyone could be trained to collect a bloodstain or find a hair. Or an affair. Or a bank balance that didn’t balance. But feelings? Only the bravest wandered into that fiery realm.”
― Louise Penny, quote from Glass Houses

“Henri kept everything important in his heart. He mostly kept cookies in his head.”
― Louise Penny, quote from Glass Houses

“He often said that words told them what someone was thinking, but the tone told them how they felt.”
― Louise Penny, quote from Glass Houses

“But Beauvoir could feel what Ruth was sensing. Something was radiating off Gamache. Was it rage he felt from the chief? Jean-Guy wondered. It certainly wasn’t fear. It was actually, Beauvoir realized with some surprise, extreme calm.”
― Louise Penny, quote from Glass Houses

“But Beauvoir could feel what Ruth was sensing. Something was radiating off Gamache. Was it rage he felt from the chief? Jean-Guy wondered. It certainly wasn’t fear. It was actually, Beauvoir realized with some surprise, extreme calm. He was like the center of gravity in the room.”
― Louise Penny, quote from Glass Houses

“The banality of evil. It wasn’t the frothing madman. It was the conscientious us.”
― Louise Penny, quote from Glass Houses

“We’re used to the film versions of psychopaths. The clearly crazies. But most psychopaths are clever. They have to be. They know how to mimic human behavior. How to pretend to care, while not actually feeling anything except perhaps rage and an overwhelming and near-perpetual sense of entitlement. That they’ve been wronged. They get what they want mostly through manipulation.”
― Louise Penny, quote from Glass Houses

“the clatter of pots and pans and dishes. To others it was a cacophony. To Anton it was a symphony.”
― Louise Penny, quote from Glass Houses

“It was an oddly comforting sight, for men and women who’d been immersed in brutality. Who’d worn their guns more proudly than their badges.”
― Louise Penny, quote from Glass Houses

“common,” said Zalmanowitz. The comment surprised Chief Superintendent”
― Louise Penny, quote from Glass Houses

“I'm sorry. I shouldn't be working."
"Of course you should. I'm alright."
"Even F.I.N.E.?"
She laughed. "Especially that."
Fucked-up. Insecure. Neurotic. Egotistical.”
― Louise Penny, quote from Glass Houses

“conscience is not necessarily a good thing. How many gays are beaten, how many abortion clinics bombed, how many blacks lynched, how many Jews murdered, by people just following their conscience?”
― Louise Penny, quote from Glass Houses

“The two men emerged from the narrow street into the open square in front of Notre-Dame Basilica, weaving around tourists taking photographs of themselves in front of the cathedral. When looked at years from now, they’d see the magnificent structure, and a whole lot of sweaty people in shorts and sundresses wilting in the scorching heat as the sun throbbed down on the cobblestones.”
― Louise Penny, quote from Glass Houses

“No,” said Myrna. “It happened because no one stopped them. Not enough people stood up soon enough. And why was that?” “Fear?” asked Clara. “Yes, partly. And partly programming. All around them, respectable Germans saw others behaving brutally toward people they considered outsiders. The Jews, gypsies, gays. It became normal and acceptable. No one told them what was happening was wrong. In fact, just the opposite.” “No one should have had to,” snapped Reine-Marie. “Myrna’s right,” said Armand, breaking his silence. “We see what she describes all the time. I saw it in the Sûreté Academy. I saw it in the brutality of the Sûreté itself. We see it when bullies are in charge. It becomes part of the culture of an institution, a family, an ethnic group, a country. It becomes not just acceptable, but expected. Applauded even.”
― Louise Penny, quote from Glass Houses

“A lie was a light. One that grew into a floodlight, that eventually illuminated the person among them with the biggest secret. The most to hide.”
― Louise Penny, quote from Glass Houses

“Unlike most of us, who tend to be transparent, people rarely see through a psychopath,” she continued. “He’s masterful. People trust and believe him. Even like him. It’s his great skill. Convincing people that his point of view is legitimate and right, often when all the evidence points in the other direction. Like Iago. It’s a kind of magic.”
― Louise Penny, quote from Glass Houses

“They all had them. Secrets. But some stank more than others.”
― Louise Penny, quote from Glass Houses

“always struck him how much more effective silence was than words. If the effect you were after was to disconcert.”
― Louise Penny, quote from Glass Houses

“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, quote from Glass Houses

“Was it too much? Tomorrow at this time, would they all be arrested? Would they all still be alive? When she left to go home to Joan that evening, would a cobrador fall into step behind her, down the long, stifling corridor? For doing too much? For doing too little? She wished now she hadn’t invited them into her chambers. Hadn’t forced the truth, and the lies, from them. She wished she could hide in happy ignorance. Go home to beer and burgers. The one question the Chief Superintendent hadn’t answered was who the defendant really was. And how the murder of Katie Evans was connected to all this. But she knew she’d find out”
― Louise Penny, quote from Glass Houses

“He sounded more confident than he really was. But Chief Superintendent Gamache understood that a leader could not afford to reveal his own emotions. He couldn't demand courage in others while quaking in fear himself.”
― Louise Penny, quote from Glass Houses

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Popular quotes

“Where can we hide in fair weather, we orphans of the storm?”
― Evelyn Waugh, quote from Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

“Praise everybody, I say to such: never be squeamish, but speak out your compliment both point-blank in a man's face, and behind his back, when you know there is a reasonable chance of his hearing it again. Never lose a chance of saying a kind word. As Collingwood never saw a vacant place in his estate but he took an acorn out of his pocket and popped it in; so deal with your compliments through life. An acorn costs nothing; but it may sprout into a prodigious bit of timber.”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, quote from Vanity Fair

“Let us remind ourselves of the terminology. A theist believes in a supernatural intelligence who, in addition to his main work of creating the universe in the first place, is still around to oversee and influence the subsequent fate of his initial creation. In many theistic belief systems, the deity is intimately involved in human affairs. He answers prayers; forgives or punishes sins; intervenes in the world by performing miracles; frets about good and bad deeds, and knows when we do them (or even think about doing them). A deist, too, believes in a supernatural intelligence, but one whose activities were confined to setting up the laws that govern the universe in the first place. The deist God never intervenes thereafter, and certainly has no specific interest in human affairs. Pantheists don't believe in a supernatural God at all, but use the word God as a non-supernatural synonym for Nature, or for the Universe, or for the lawfulness that governs its workings. Deists differ from theists in that their God does not answer prayers, is not interested in sins or confessions, does not read our thoughts and does not intervene with capricious miracles. Deists differ from pantheists in that the deist God is some kind of cosmic intelligence, rather than the pantheist's metaphoric or poetic synonym for the laws of the universe. Pantheism is sexed-up atheism. Deism is watered-down theism.”
― Richard Dawkins, quote from The God Delusion

“It might be lonelier
Without the Loneliness —
I'm so accustomed to my Fate —
Perhaps the Other — Peace —

Would interrupt the Dark —
And crowd the little Room —
Too scant — by Cubits — to contain
The Sacrament — of Him —

I am not used to Hope —
It might intrude upon —
Its sweet parade — blaspheme the place —
Ordained to Suffering —

It might be easier
To fail — with Land in Sight —
Than gain — My Blue Peninsula —
To perish — of Delight —

F535 (1863) J405”
― Emily Dickinson, quote from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

“There's no word worth your life.”
― Dalton Trumbo, quote from Johnny Got His Gun

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