“To lose the approbation of my dog is a thing too horrible to contemplate.”

“Dwelling much on the contemplation of little things, [we] are in danger of losing the intellectual appetite.”

“War was a hellish, horrible hideous thing - too horrible and hideous to happen in the twentieth century between civilised nations.”

“My skull is soundproof. And thank God too, or else you’d be able to hear all the horrible things I’m thinking about you.
”

“Farewell is a beautiful and a soft word and yet it is a horrible and a heavy thing too!”

“We all do stupid, cruel things as children. I remember I once took a neighbor's dog and shut it in my house, then told the little girl her dog had been picked up by the dog catcher and destroyed. I still wake up at three in the morning seeing her face. I tracked her down about ten years ago to say I was sorry but she'd been killed in a car accident.""You have to forgive yourself", said Gamache, holding up Being."You're right, of course. But maybe I don't want to. Maybe that's something I don't want to lose. My own private hell. Horrible, but mine.”