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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Or - perhaps - I should just worry about my own behavior and let others be who they are.
Louise Penny
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How much more courage it took to be kind than to be cruel.
Louise Penny
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Aid workers, when handing out food to starving people, quickly learn that the people fighting for it at the front are the people who need it least. It's the people sitting quietly at the back, too weak to fight, who need it the most. And so too with tragedy.
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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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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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 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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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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Myrna could spend happy hours browsing bookcases. She felt if she could just get a good look at a person’s bookcase and their grocery cart, she’d pretty much know who they were.
Louise Penny
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What people mistook for safety was in fact captivity.
Louise Penny
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No good ever comes from putting up walls. What people mistake for safety is in fact captivity. And few things thrive in captivity.
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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When someone stabs you it's not your fault that you feel pain.
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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In winter the very ground seemed to reach up and grab the elderly, yanking them to earth as though hungry for them.
Louise Penny
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To be honest, the only thing I ever really wanted to be was a writer - since I read 'Charlotte's Web' as a child.
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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The women in the room chatted about love, about childhood, about losing parents, about Mr. Spock, about good books they'd read. They mothered each other.
Louise Penny