Give bad news swiftly, and spread out the good news. Machiavelli.” Charpentier.
What’s the use of healing, if the life that’s saved is callow and selfish and ruled by fear? There’s a difference between being in sanctuary and being in hiding.” “So you have to leave sanctuary in order to have it?” she asked.
How many clients had Myrna sat across from as they complained about having been “done wrong”? Whose grip on grievances was so tight it strangled reason. They’d give up sanity before giving up these injustices.
He now knew that happiness and kindness went together.
I’ll pray that you grow up a brave man in a brave country,” Clara said. “I will pray you find a way to be useful,” Gamache completed the quote.
Why were there no words that felt? Words that when you touched them you’d feel what was intended? The chasm left by the loss of Madeleine? The lump in the throat that fizzed and ached. The terror of falling asleep knowing that on waking she’d relive the loss, like Prometheus bound and tormented each day. Everything had changed. Even her grammar. Suddenly she lived in the past tense. And the singular.
He inhaled deeply and exhaled the word “people.” Not so much an indictment as in wonderment. That there could be so much deliberate cruelty and so much kindness in one species.
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.
You are a man with a protective instinct. To care that deeply is a blessing. But like most blessings, it can also be a curse.
But wouldn’t people, his clients, realize? When there was no actual money in the account?” “How?” “When they asked for it.” “But people don’t,” she said. “They give it to their investment dealer, and at best they cash in the dividends or take the profits. But the capital remains in the account. Weren’t you ever told by your parents never to touch the capital?” “No. I was told not to touch my brother’s bike.
And I would never, ever mock the power of love. But it can also distort. Slip over into desperation and delusion.
Our secrets make us sick because they separate us from other people. Keep us alone. Turn us into fearful, angry, bitter people. Turn us against others, and finally against ourselves. A murder almost always began with a secret. Murder was a secret spread over time. Gamache.
My favorite quote from Thoreau is also from Walden,” said Gamache. “A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.
These are dangerous times and dangerous people. We need all the help we can get.
I’ll put my faith in individuals, not the collective.
There’s no wrong answer. Just the truth.
There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supersedes all other courts.
Far greater than Gamache’s anger was his caring.
It was like walking into joy.
Everyone we meet, every word we speak, every action taken or not taken lives in our longhouse. With us. Always. Never to be expelled or locked away.