Home > Work > Kingdom of the Blind (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #14)
1 " It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live. "
― Louise Penny , Kingdom of the Blind (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #14)
2 " the four statements that lead to wisdom: I don’t know. I need help. I was wrong. I’m sorry. "
3 " Non. He said, ‘Be very, very careful who you let into your life. And learn to make peace with whatever happens. You can’t erase the past. It’s trapped in there with you. But you can make peace with it. If you don’t,’ he said, ‘you’ll be at perpetual war. "
4 " And now you see why lies matter. The actual fib might not matter, but what it shows us is that what you say can’t always be trusted. You can’t always be trusted. "
5 " As a good rule of thumb, if you have to lie, you might be doing something wrong. "
6 " But he also knew praying was more to steady the person than inform the deity. "
7 " Entitlement was, she knew, a terrible thing. It chained the person to their victimhood. It gobbled up all the air around it. Until the person lived in a vacuum, where nothing good could flourish. "
8 " Things sometimes fell apart unexpectedly. It was not necessarily a reflection of how much they were valued. "
9 " What I was going to say is that my mentor had this theory that our lives are like an aboriginal longhouse. Just one huge room.” He swept one arm out to illustrate scope. “He said that if we thought we could compartmentalize things, we were deluding ourselves. Everyone we meet, every word we speak, every action taken or not taken lives in our longhouse. With us. Always. Never to be expelled or locked away. "
10 " It was no use telling her he understood. Or that it was all right. She’d earned the right to no easy answer. "
11 " There’s more, but I won’t go on. It’s a poem by Rupert Brooke. He was a soldier in the First World War. It helped him in the hellhole of the trenches to think of the things he loved. It helped me too. I made mental lists and followed the things I love, the people I love, back to sanity. I still do. "
12 " It would be folly to trust the instincts of a baby. But it would also be a mistake to completely dismiss them. "
13 " Ruth Zardo. A gifted poet. One of the most distinguished in the nation. But that gift had come wrapped in more than a dollop of crazy. "
14 " There was nothing like the pain of the present to cure the pain of the past. "
15 " Be very, very careful who you let into your life. And learn to make peace with whatever happens. You can't erase the past. It's trapped in there with you. But you can make peace with it. If you don't,' he said, 'you'll be at perpetual war. "
16 " He was tired of the tyranny of the greater good. "
17 " Who hurt you once so far beyond repair / That you would greet each overture with curling lip. "
18 " Hope itself wasn’t necessarily kind. Or a good thing. "
19 " Once again the fate of reckless youth was being decided by old men behind closed doors. "
20 " She painted what appeared to be portraits, but that was only on the surface. The beautifully rendered flesh stretched, and sometimes sagged, over wounds, over celebrations. Over chasms of loss and rushes of joy. She painted peace and despair. All in one portrait. With brush and canvas and oils, Clara both captured and freed her subject. "