Things sometimes fell apart unexpectedly. It was not necessarily a reflection of how much they were valued.
Annie laughed. She had a face, a body, made not for a Paris runway but for good meals and books by the fire and laughter. She was constructed from, and for, happiness. But it had taken Annie Gamache a long while to find it. To trust it.
Rules meant order. Without them they’d be killing each other. It began with butting in, with parking in disabled spaces, with smoking in elevators. And it ended in murder.
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.
If less was more, she had a great deal.
All will be as it should, if we just do our best.
You know Gabri, he wears his heart on his sleeve.’ In fact, there were times Olivier wondered whether Gabri hadn’t been born inside out.
Some mothers see their job as preparing their kids to live in the big old world. To be independent, to marry and have children of their own. To live wherever they choose and do what makes them happy. That’s love. Others, and we all see them, cling to their children. Move to the same city, the same neighborhood. Live through them. Stifle them. Manipulate, use guilt-trips, cripple them.’ ‘Cripple them? How?’ ‘By not teaching them to be independent.
Her voice was flat, in a way Myrna recognized from years of listening to people trying to rein in their emotions. To squash them down, flatten, them, and with them their words and their voices. Desperately trying to make the horrific sound mundane.
All the mistakes I’ve made have been because I’ve assumed something and then acted as though it was fact. Very dangerous, Agent Lemieux. Believe me. I wonder if you haven’t already leaped to a false conclusion?
His heart filled his chest and ran to the end of his tail and the very tips of his considerable ears. It filled his head, squeezing out his brain. But Henri, the foundling, was a humanist, and while not particularly clever was the smartest creature Gamache knew. Everything he knew he knew by heart.
It would be folly to trust the instincts of a baby. But it would also be a mistake to completely dismiss them.
Love and worry. They went hand in hand. Fellow travelers.
But he also knew praying was more to steady the person than inform the deity.
Ring the bells that still can ring, Forget your perfect offering, There’s a crack in everything, That’s how the light gets in.’ ‘What an extraordinary poem. Ruth Zardo?’ ‘Leonard Cohen. Clara used it in her piece. She wrote it on the wall behind the three of you, like graffiti.
You can tell a lot about a man by his friends, or lack of them. Do they bring out the best in each other, or are they always gossiping, tearing others down? Keeping wounds alive?
Be careful. You’re making hurting a habit. Spreading it around won’t lessen your pain, you know. Just the opposite.
Maybe that’s what old men are for. To make decisions that no young man can.” He was watching Gamache closely. “Or should have to.
It was no use telling her he understood. Or that it was all right. She’d earned the right to no easy answer.
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.