Quote

I had to learn compassion. Had to learn what it felt like to hate, and to forgive and to love and be loved. And to lose people close to me. Had to feel deep loneliness and sorrow. And then I could write.

Louise Penny

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Louise Penny
Age: 66
Born: 1958
Born: July 1
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
City of Toronto
Feels
Lose
Writing
Loved
Forgive
Love
Loses
Loneliness
Like
Learn
Forgiving
People
Hate
Sorrow
Write
Compassion
Felt
Close
Feel
Deep

More quotes by Louise Penny

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The night is a strawberry.
Louise Penny
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Better to accept the wretched truth than struggle, twisting to make a wish a reality.
Louise Penny
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Where there is love there is courage, where there is courage there is peace, where there is peace there is God. And when you have God, you have everything.
Louise Penny
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Winning doesn't mean my book is better than anyone else's. It means I'm very fortunate. And I should be very, very aware of that. And grateful.
Louise Penny
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I went through a period in my life when I had no friends, when the phone never rang, when I thought I would die from loneliness. I know that the real blessing here isn't that I have a book published, but that I have so many people to thank.
Louise Penny
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Her voice was slightly accented but her French was perfect. Someone who'd not just learned the language but loved it. And it showed with every syllable. Gamache knew it was impossible to split language from culture. That without one the other withered. To love the language was to respect the culture.
Louise Penny
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I'm just like this. I have no talent for choosing my battles. Life seems, strangely, like a battle to me. The whole thing.
Louise Penny
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A good journalist, as you know, is a great listener. And so's a good writer. And I got to listen to people for almost 20 years. That serves me well, I hope, when I try to understand how a character might be feeling, or how they might react.
Louise Penny
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Let every man shovel out his own snow, and the whole city will be passable, said Gamache. Seeing Beauvoir's puzzled expression he added, Emerson. Lake and Palmer? Ralph and Waldo.
Louise Penny
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Foolish people are never harmless. Stupidity accounts for as many crimes as anger and greed.
Louise Penny
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Life is change. If you aren't growing and evolving, you're standing still, and the rest of the world is surging ahead.
Louise Penny
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I turned down all the requests for the rights to the books, for years, mostly because they wanted the rights to the characters, and to turn it into a TV series. This would have allowed them to do anything they wanted with the characters, and that just wasn't an option for me.
Louise Penny
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Things are strongest where they're broken.
Louise Penny
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A journalist also needs to be disciplined, and so do I. I am, essentially, lazy. Without discipline I'd be just a mass of gummy bears on the sofa instead of on book tour with my eighth novel.
Louise Penny
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Every year the hunters shot cows and horses and family pets and each other. And unbelievably, they sometimes shot themselves, perhaps in a psychotic episode where they mistook themselves for dinner
Louise Penny
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What haunted people even, perhaps especially, on their deathbed? What chased them, tortured them and brought some of them to their knees? And [he] thought he had the answer. Regret. Regret for things said, things done, and things not done. Regret for the people they might have been. And failed to be.
Louise Penny
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Now here's a good one: you're lying on your deathbed. You have one hour to live. Who is it, exactly, you have needed all these years to forgive?
Louise Penny
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I've seen enough successful writers who no longer seem to care when they are recognized with an award, and I think that's just tragic.
Louise Penny
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What people mistook for safety was in fact captivity.
Louise Penny
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Or - perhaps - I should just worry about my own behavior and let others be who they are.
Louise Penny