Home > Work > Glass Houses (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #13)
1 " Jesus, is Gamache hiring fetuses now? "
― Louise Penny , Glass Houses (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #13)
2 " The drug smuggling today had, as its godparents, the bootleggers nearly a hundred years ago. The syndicates, the systems, the psyches were created back then. "
3 " 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. "
4 " 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. "
5 " It wasn’t really, he knew, about less fear. It was about more courage. "
6 " 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. "
7 " But sometimes that comfort was an illusion. Masquerading as protecting, while actually imprisoning. "
8 " There seems such a fine line between falling into place and falling apart. "
9 " Look at Nuremberg. Why did the Holocaust happen?” “Because deluded, power-crazy leaders needed a common enemy,” said Clara. “No,” said Myrna. “It happened because no one stopped them. Not enough people stood up soon enough. "
10 " Henri kept everything important in his heart. He mostly kept cookies in his head. "
11 " He often said that words told them what someone was thinking, but the tone told them how they felt. "
12 " 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. "
13 " 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. "
14 " The banality of evil. It wasn’t the frothing madman. It was the conscientious us. "
15 " If ever two men were made for cahoots, it was these two. They were cahootites. "
16 " 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. "
17 " 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? "
18 " But he was a thirty-nine-year-old black man. He’d been stopped so many times by the cops, he’d stopped counting. They’d had to train their fourteen-year-old son, from the time he could walk, how to behave when stopped by the cops. When harassed. When targeted. When pushed and provoked. Don’t react. Move slowly. Show your hands. Be polite, do as you’re asked. Don’t react. "
19 " Some might argue that Three Pines itself isn’t real, and they’d be right, but limited in their view. The village does not exist, physically. But I think of it as existing in ways that are far more important and powerful. 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. "
20 " 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. "