The Long Way Home

After spending most of her life scanning the horizon for slights and threats, genuine and imagined, she knew the real threat to her happiness came not from the dot in the distance, but from looking for it. Expecting it. Waiting for it. And in some cases, creating it. Her father had jokingly accused her of living in the wreckage of her future. Until one day she’d looked deep into his eyes and saw he wasn’t joking. He was warning her.

Fear lives in the head. And courage lives in the heart. The job is to get from one to the other.” “And between the two is the lump in the throat,

I’ll pray that you grow up a brave man in a brave country. I will pray you find a way to be useful.

You too?" She asked Ruth. "How do your poems start out?" "They start as a lump in the throat," she said.

Turmoil shook loose all sorts of unpleasant truths. But it took peace to examine them.

What’s the use of healing, if the life that’s saved is callow and selfish and ruled by fear? There’s a difference between being in sanctuary and being in hiding.

[Being jealous] is like drinking acid, and expecting the other person to die.

Not everyone’s an explorer, and not every explorer makes it back alive. That’s why it takes so much courage.

If love was compass enough, said Armand quietly, there would be no missing children.

Annie laughed. She had a face, a body, made not for a Paris runway but for good meals and books by the fire and laughter. She was constructed from, and for, happiness. But it had taken Annie Gamache a long while to find it. To trust it.

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. Desperately trying to make the horrific sound mundane.

Clara didn't carry a grudge. They were too heavy and she had too far to go.

I’ll pray that you grow up a brave man in a brave country,” Clara said. “I will pray you find a way to be useful,” Gamache completed the quote. Reine-Marie dropped her eyes to her hands and saw the paper napkin twisted and shredded there. Clara nodded slowly. “I think you might be right. Peter went to Paris not to find a new artistic voice. It was simpler than that. He wanted to find a way to be useful.

Fear lives in the head. And courage lives in the heart. The job is to get from one to the other.

How do your poems start out?” “They start as a lump in the throat,” she said. “Isn’t that normally just a cocktail olive lodged there?” Olivier asked. “Once,” Ruth admitted. “Wrote quite a good poem before I coughed it up.

believe in using your head. But not in spending too much time in there. Fear lives in the head. And courage lives in the heart. The job is to get from one to the other.

Peter's a lucky man except in one respect, he doesn't seem to know how lucky he is.

Every morning he went for a walk with his wife, Reine-Marie, and their German shepherd Henri. Tossing the tennis ball ahead of them, they ended up chasing it down themselves when Henri became distracted by a fluttering leaf, or a black fly, or the voices in his head. The dog would race after the ball, then stop and stare into thin air, moving his gigantic satellite ears this way and that. Honing in on some message. Not tense, but quizzical. It was, Gamache recognized, the way most people listened when they heard on the wind the wisps of a particularly beloved piece of music. Or a familiar voice from far away.

There is a balm in Gilead,” she read from the back, “to make the wounded whole—” “There’s power enough in Heaven / To cure a sin-sick soul.

Peter always had a ‘best before’ date stamped on his forehead,” said Ruth. “People who live in their heads do. They start out well enough, but eventually they run out of ideas. And if there’s no imagination, no inspiration to fall back on? Then what?

Armand Gamache had seen the worst. But he’d also seen the best. Often in the same person.

Most people want to be led. But suppose they choose the wrong leader? They end up with the Donner party.

In a life filled with great good fortune of health, of creativity, of friends, living in safety and privilege with the loving partner. There was just one bit of misfortune in his life and that was that Peter Morrow seemed to have no idea how very fortunate he was.

Dr. Vincent Gilbert lived in the heart of the forest. Away from human conflict, but also away from human contact. It was a compromise he was more than happy to make.

He loved Clara. I miss a lot in life,” said Gilbert. “But I have a nose for love.” “Like a truffle pig,” said Beauvoir, then regretted it when he saw the asshole saint’s reaction. Then, unexpectedly, Gilbert smiled. “Exactly. I can smell it. Love has an aroma all its own, you know.” Beauvoir looked at Gilbert, amazed by what he’d just heard. Maybe, he thought, this man was— “Smells like compost,” said Gilbert. —an asshole after all.

An unsuspected yearning uncovered, discovered. For a simpler time and a simpler life. Before Internet, and climate change, and terrorism. When neighbors worked together, and separation was not a topic or an issue or wise.

This was the great benefit of seeing worse. Fewer things worried him now.

A coy smile could capture him, but it was finally a hearty laugh that had freed him.

Sometimes the only way up is down. Sometimes the only way forward is to back up.