“Almost invariably people expected that if you were a good person you shouldn't meet a bad end, that only the deserving are killed and certainly only the deserving are murdered. However well hidden and subtle, there was a sense that a murdered person had somehow asked for it. That's why the shock when someone they knew to be kind and good was a victim. There was a feeling that surely there had been a mistake.”

“The bistro was his secret weapon in tracking down murderers. Not just in Three Pines, but in every town and village in Quebec. First he found a comfortable café or brasserie, or bistro, then he found the murderer. Because Armand Gamache knew something many of his colleagues never figured out. Murder was deeply human, the murdered and the murderer. To describe the murderer as a monstrosity, a grotesque, was to give him an unfair advantage. No. Murderers were human, and at the root of each murder was an emotion. Warped, no doubt. Twisted and ugly. But an emotion. And one so powerful it had driven a man to make a ghost.Gamache's job was to collect the evidence, but also to collect the emotions. And the only way he knew to do that was do get to know the people. To watch and listen. To pay attention, and the best way to do that was in a deceptively casual way in a deceptively casual setting.Like the bistro.”

“They stared ahead. Silent. Morin had never realized murderers were caught in silence. But they were.”

“Gamache nodded. It was what made his job so fascinating, and so difficult. How the same person could be both kind and cruel, compassionate and wretched. Unraveling a murder was more about getting to know the people than the evidence. People who were contrary and contradictory, and who often didn't even know themselves.”

“It's a blessing Madame Gamache and I had at our wedding. It was read at the end of the ceremony.Now you will feel no rainFor each of you will be shelter for the otherNow you will feel no coldFor each of you will be warmth for the otherNow there is no loneliness for youNow there is no more loneliness.Now you are two persons, but there is one life before you.Go now to your dwelling placeTo enter into the days of your togetherness.And may your days be good and long upon this earth.(Apache Blessing)”

“But you want murderous feelings? Hang around librarians," confided Gamache. "All that silence. Gives them ideas.”

“That was the danger. Not that betrayals happened, not that cruel things happened, but that they could outweigh all the good. That we could forget the good and only remember the bad.”