Maps gave them control over their surroundings, for the first time ever. It showed how to get from one place to another. It sounds simple now, but a thousand years ago it would have been an incredible feat of imagination and imagery. All maps are drawn as though looking down. From a bird’s point of view. From their god’s point of view. Imagine being the first person to think of that. To be able to wrap their minds around a perspective they’d never seen. And then draw it.
Anyone so damaged as to cause this much harm led a life full of secrets and full of enemies.
Despite himself, Beauvoir laughed. “There is strong shadow where there is much light.
Time, it covered over everything eventually. Events, people, memory. Chiniquy had disappeared beneath Time.
Myrna... prayed God wasn’t one of of the men or women she’d betrayed by signing their release. Myrna’s weight wasn’t all carried around her middle.
He was like an addict before a fix. Book freaks are like that, and not just old guys. Look at kids lining up for the latest installment of their favorite books. Stories, they’re addictive.” Gamache.
Young Langlois had sat down and gathered that power to him. The power that came from having information, knowledge, thoughts, and a calm place to collect them.
She threw great logs of ‘I’m right, you’re an unfeeling bastard’ on to the fire and felt secure and comforted.
Do you know why we’re all happy here, monsieur? Because it’s the last house on the road.
While there were few things more terrifying than being outside in a blizzard, there were few things more comforting than being inside.
A belief of convenience isn’t much use, is it?
This used to be my drug of choice. In my teens my drug of choice was acceptance, in my twenties it was approval, in my thirties it was love, in my forties it was Scotch.
We knew who would want him found, Dr Croix, but who wants him to remain buried?
A will, an estate, could become about more than money, property, possessions. Who was left the most could be interpreted as who was loved the most. There were different sorts of greed. Of need.
A mind with absolutely no insight into itself, a mind filled with purpose and delusion.
They were home. He always felt a bit like a snail, but instead of carrying his home on his back, he carried it in his arms.
A lie was a light. One that grew into a floodlight, that eventually illuminated the person among them with the biggest secret. The most to hide.
Recruiters, for terrorist cells and police forces and armies, relied on this simple truth: if you got people young enough, they could be made to do just about anything.
Having a friend, Chief Inspector. All you need is one. Makes all the difference.
She closed her eyes and felt him inside her skin. Where he was vibrant and smart and irreverent and loving. She saw his smile, heard his laugh. Felt his hands. Felt his body. Now he was gone. But he hadn’t left. And she sometimes wondered if that was him, beating on her heart. And she wondered what would happen if he stopped. Every night she came here. Parked. And stared at the window. Hoping to see some sign of life.