Still Life Quotes

“There are four things that lead to wisdom. You ready for them?'
She nodded, wondering when the police work would begin.
"They are four sentences we learn to say, and mean." Gamache held up his hand as a fist and raised a finger with each point. "I don't know. I need help. I'm sorry. I was wrong'.”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“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 that. And as powerful. so when I'm observing that's what I'm watching for. The choices people make”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“Myrna could spend happy hours browsing bookcases. She felt if she could just get a good look at a person’s bookcase and their grocery cart, she’d pretty much know who they were.”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“I think many people love their problems. Gives them all sorts of excuses for not growing up and getting on with life.”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“Life is change. If you aren't growing and evolving, you're standing still, and the rest of the world is surging ahead.”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“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.”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“Peter swept aside Yogi Tea and Harmony Herbal Blend, though he hesitated a second over the chamomile. .... But no. Violent death demanded Earl Grey.”
― Louise Penny , Still Life

“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.”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“The fault lies with us, and only us. It’s not fate, not genetics, not bad luck, and it’s definitely not Mom and Dad. Ultimately it’s us and our choices. But, but’ – now her eyes shone and she almost vibrated with excitement – ‘the most powerful, spectacular thing is that the solution rests with us as well. We’re the only ones who can change our lives, turn them around. So all those years waiting for someone else to do it are wasted.”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“Aid workers, when handing out food to starving people, quickly learn that the people fighting for it at the front are the people who need it least. It's the people sitting quietly at the back, too weak to fight, who need it the most. And so too with tragedy.”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“They waited for life to happen to them. They waited for someone to save them. Or heal them. They did nothing for themselves.”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“Three Pines wasn’t on any tourist map, being too far off any main or even secondary road. Like Narnia, it was generally found unexpectedly and with a degree of surprise that such an elderly village should have been hiding in this valley all along. Anyone fortunate enough to find it once usually found their way back.”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“They lead "still" lives, waiting. - Myrna Landers

Waiting for what? - Armand Gamache

Waiting for someone to save them. Expecting someone to save them or at least protect them from the big, bad world. The thing is no one else can save them because the problem is theirs and so is the solution. - Myrna”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“Life is loss. But out of that, as the book stresses, comes freedom. If we can accept that nothing is permanent, and change is inevitable, if we can adapt, then we’re going to be happier people.”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“Everyday for Lucy's entire dog life Jane had sliced a banana for breakfast and had miraculously dropped one of the perfect disks on to the floor where it sat for an instant before being gobbled up. Every morning Lucy's prayers were answered, confirming her belief that God was old and clumsy and smelt like roses and lived in the kitchen.
But no more.
Lucy knew her God was dead. And she now knew the miracle wasn't the banana, it was the hand that offered the banana.”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“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 that. And as powerful. So when I’m observing, that’s what I’m watching for. The choices people make.”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“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. It waits in alleys and metro stops. After the sun goes down plugs are pulled by white-clad guardians and death is invited into an antiseptic room.

But in the country death comes, uninvited, during the day. It takes fishermen in their longboats. It grabs children by the ankles as they swim. In winter it calls them down a slope too steep for their budding skills, and crosses their skies at the tips. It waits along the shore where snow met ice not long ago but now, unseen by sparkling eyes, a little water touches the shore, and the skater makes a circle slightly larger than intended. Death stands in the woods with a bow and arrow at dawn and dusk. And it tugs cars off the road in broad daylight, the tires spinning furiously on ice or snow, or bright autumn leaves. ”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“His theory is that life is loss,’ said Myrna after a moment. ‘Loss of parents, loss of loves, loss of jobs. So we have to find a higher meaning in our lives than these things and people. Otherwise we’ll lose ourselves.”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“Abby Hoffman said we should all eat what we kill. That would put an end to war.”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“Most of us are great with change, as long it was our idea. But change imposed from the outside can send some people into a tailspin. - Myrna Landers”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“I'm just like this. I have no talent for choosing my battles. Life seems, strangely, like a battle to me. The whole thing.”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“In my experience people who have been hurt either pass it on and become abusive themselves or they develop a great kindness.”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“Most of us are great with change, as long as it was our idea.”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table,”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“Every year the hunters shot cows and horses and family pets and each other. And unbelievably, they sometimes shot themselves, perhaps in a psychotic episode where they mistook themselves for dinner”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“Living our lives was like living in a long house. We entered as babies at one end, and we exited when our time came. And in between we moved through this one, great, long room. Everyone we ever met, and every thought and action lived in that room with us. Until we made peace with the less agreeable parts of our past they’d continue to heckle us from way down the long house. And sometimes the really loud, obnoxious ones told us what to do, directing our actions even years later.”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“– ‘I think many people love their problems. Gives them all sorts of excuses for not growing up and getting on with life.”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“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 something real and meaningful. He dialed his cell phone and got her. But the words got caught somewhere south of his throat. Instead he told her the weather had cleared, and she told him about the movie she'd rented. Then they both hung up.”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“Gamache enjoyed going to churches for their music and the beauty of the language and the stillness. But he felt closer to God in his Volvo.”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“Almost invariably people expected that if you were a good person you shouldn't meet a bad end, that only the deserving are killed and certainly only the deserving are murdered. However well hidden and subtle, there was a sense that a murdered person had somehow asked for it. That's why the shock when someone they knew to be kind and good was a victim. There was a feeling that surely there had been a mistake.”
― Louise Penny, Still Life