Do you know why we’re all happy here, monsieur? Because it’s the last house on the road.

— Louise Penny

Eventually he'd let the answering machine take over and had hidden in his studio. Where he's hidden all his life. From the monster. He could feel ITIN their bedroom now. He could feel its tail swishing by him. Feel its hot, fetid breath. All his life he knew if he was quiet enough, small enough, it wouldn't see him. If he didn't make a fuss, didn't speak up, it wouldn't hear him, wouldn't hurt him. If he was beyond criticism and hid his cruelty with a smile and good deeds, it wouldn't devour him. By now he realized there was no hiding. It would always be there, and always find him. He was the monster.

— Louise Penny

Grief was dagger-shaped and sharp and pointed inward. It was made of fresh loss and old sorrow. Rendered and forged and sometimes polished. Irene Finney had taken her daughter’s death and to that sorrow she’d added a long life of entitlement and disappointment, of privilege and pride. And the dagger she’d fashioned was taking a brief break from slashing her insides, and was now pointed outward.

— Louise Penny

He'd shoved his toque and mitts into the sleeve of his parka when he'd come in the night before, and now, thrusting his right arm into the armhole, he hit the blockage. At a practiced shove the pompom of the toque crowned the cuff followed by his mitts, like a tiny birth.

— Louise Penny

He had his treasure, but finally all he wanted was his family. And peace.

— Louise Penny

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.

— Louise Penny

. .his cell phone didn't work in Three Pines, and neither did email. He almost expected to see messages fluttering back and forth in the sky above the village, unable to descend.

— Louise Penny

Homes, Apache knew, were a self-portrait. A person's choice of color, furnishing, pictures, every touch revealed the individual. God, or the devil, was in the details. And so was the human. Was it dirty, messy, obsessively clean? Were the decorations chosen to impress, or were they a hodgepodge of personal history? Was the space cluttered or clear? He felt a thrill every time he entered a home during an investigation.

— Louise Penny

Houses are like people, Agent Remain. They have secrets. I'll tell you something I've learned.' Armand Apache dropped his voice so that Agent Remain had to strain to hear.' Do you know what makes us sick, Agent Remain?' Lemieux shook his head. Then out of the darkness and stillness he heard the answer.' It's our secrets that make us sick.

— Louise Penny

I just sit where I'm put, composed of stone and wishful thinking:that the deity who kills for pleasure will also heal, that in the midst of your nightmare, the final one, a kind lion will come with bandages in her mouth and the soft body of a woman, and lick you clean of fever, and pick your soul up gently by the nape of the neckband caress you into darkness and paradise.

— Louise Penny