He listened to people, took notes, gathered evidence, like all his colleagues. But he did one more thing. He gathered feelings. He collected emotions. Because murder was deeply human.
That was why she was happy. He now knew that happiness ad kindness went together. There was not one without the other. For Jean-Guy it was a struggle. For Annie it seemed natural.
Gamache was the best of them, the smartest and bravest and strongest because he was willing to go into his own head alone, and open all the doors there, and enter all the dark rooms. And make friends with what he found there. And he went into the dark, hidden rooms in the minds of others. The minds of killers. And he faced down whatever monsters came at him. He went to places Beauvoir had never even dreamed existed.
He had his treasure, but finally all he wanted was his family. And peace.
Do you know the sums that I do?” “I count my blessings.
That’s a huge one, of course. Most of us are great with change, as long as it was our idea. But change imposed from the outside can send some people into a tailspin. I think Brother Albert hit it on the head. 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.
They had such a profound effect on those who sang and heard them that the ancient chants became known as “the beautiful mystery.
Kindness beats cruelty.
Haven’t you ever heard of an artist’s muse?” the barman asked. “They all seem to either have one or want one. Me, all I want is peace and quiet.
If kind acts could protect us from tragedy, thought Lacoste, the world would be a kinder place.
Not everyone makes the boat, she thought.
She knew how the Chief Inspector preferred decorum at the site of a murder, especially in the presence of the corpse. It was rare. Most murder scenes were filled with smart-ass and often gruesome comments, made by men and women frightened by what they saw, and believing sarcasm and rude remarks kept the monsters at bay. They didn’t.
And this was what a couple of that age looked like. If they were lucky.
He read the familiar first lines of the book and felt the calm come over him, like a comforter.
This was the worst story yet. The phantom life that might have been.
But privately Reine-Marie wondered. Wondered whether what people did in a crisis was, in fact, their real selves. Stripped of artifice and social training. It was easy enough to be decent when all was going your way. It was another matter to be decent when all hell was breaking loose.
Any real act of creation is first an act of destruction. Picasso said it, and it’s true. We don’t build on the old, we tear it down. And start fresh.
The mess in the drawers was in contrast to the neat desktop. Many people’s lives were like that. The neat room and the messy closet. The well-ordered counters and the chaos in the cabinets.
Clara tried to give the eulogy, but couldn’t speak. Her words stuck at the lump in her throat. And so Myrna took over, holding her hand while Clara stood beside her.
Character is not created in times like these. It’s revealed.