The trial is about facts, but feelings are also a fact.
That’s what I believe,” said Ruth. “Peter didn’t. Here was a man who was given everything. Talent, love, a peaceful place to live and create. And all he had to do was appreciate it.” “And if he didn’t?” “He would remain stone. And the deities would turn on him. They do, you know. They’re generous, but they demand gratitude.
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. And the tragedy was almost always compounded, Myrna knew. These people invariably passed it on from generation to generation. Magnified each time. The sore point became their family legend, their myth, their legacy. What they lost became their most prized possession. Their inheritance.
But Beauvoir could feel what Ruth was sensing. Something was radiating off Gamache. Was it rage he felt from the chief? Jean-Guy wondered. It certainly wasn’t fear. It was actually, Beauvoir realized with some surprise, extreme calm.
The sore point became their family legend, their myth, their legacy. What they lost became their most prized possession. Their inheritance.
Chief Inspector Gamache knew one thing about hate. It bound you forever to the person you hated. Murder wasn’t committed out of hate, it was done as a terrible act of freedom. To finally rid yourself of the burden.
But Annie hates children.” “Well, she’s not very good with them, but I don’t think she hates them. She adores Florence and Zora.” “She has to,” said Beauvoir. “They’re family. She’s probably depending on them, in her old age. She’ll be bitter Auntie Annie, with the stale chocolates and the doorknob collection. And they’ll have to look after her. So she can’t drop them on their heads now.
You need to know this. Everything makes sense. Everything. We just don’t know how yet.
Her notebook, on the table, contained neither rhymes nor reason but held, between the worn pages, the lump in the throat.
But Armand always said people react differently to death, and it was folly to judge anyone and double folly to judge what people do when faced with sudden, violent death. Murder. They weren’t themselves.
Chief Inspector Gamache knew one thing about hate. It bound you forever to the person you hated.
Apart they were individual colors, but together they made giddy light.
Before laptops and BlackBerries and all the other tools that mistook information for knowledge. It was an old library, filled with old books and dusty old thoughts.
You can tell a lot about a man by his friends, or lack of them.
She did believe in God. And she believed that Jane was with him. And suddenly her pain and grief became human and natural. And survivable. She had a place to put it, a place where Jane was with God. It was such a relief. She looked.
The banality of evil. It wasn’t the frothing madman. It was the conscientious us.
Abbots and priors and monks, oh my.
Jews, gypsies, gays. It became normal and acceptable. No one told them what was happening was wrong. In fact, just the opposite.
Well, you might’ve asked what he was doing there.” “I already had. And in any other circumstance, you’d be asking me why I, a police officer, was harassing a citizen who was just standing in a park, minding his own business.” “A masked citizen,” said the Crown. “Again,” said Gamache. “Being masked is not a crime. It’s strange, absolutely. And I’m not going to tell you I was happy about it. I wasn’t. But there was nothing I could do.
That any decent person would’ve refused to participate in the Holocaust.