“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. ”

“When Olivier had been taken away Gamache had sat back down and stared at the sack. what could be worse than Chaos, Despair, War?What would even the Mountain flee from? Gamache had given it a lot of thought.What haunted people even, perhaps especially, on their deathbed? What chased them, tortured them and brought some of them to their knees? And Gamache thought he had the answer.Regret. Regret for things said, for things done, and not done. Regret for the people they might have been. And failed to be.Finally, when he was alone, the Chief Inspector had opened the sack and looking inside had realize he'd been wrong. The worst thing of all wasn't regret.”

“They were cunning,deceitful,arrogant and nearly incomprehensible,especially the Anglos. They were dangerous because they hid their thoughts,hid their feelings behind a smiling face. Who could tell what was really going on in their heads? They said one thing and thought another. Who knew what rancid thing lived ,curled up,in the space between words and thoughts.”

“People wandered in for books and conversation. They brought their stories to her, some bound, and some known by heart. She recognized some of the stories as real, and some as fiction. But she honored them all, though she didn't buy every one.”

“She'd wanted to run an inn. To welcome people, to mother them. They had no children of their own, and she had a powerful need to nurture.”

“Beauvoir was quiet, watching the Chief, taking in the gleam in his eye, the enthusiasm as he described what he'd found. Not the physical landscape, but the emotional. The intellectual.Many might have thought the Chief Inspector was a hunter. He tracked down killers. But Jean Guy knew he wasn't that. Chief Inspector Gama he was an explorer by nature. He was never happier than when he was pushing the boundaries, exploring the internal terrain. Areas even the person themselves hadn't explored. Had never examined. Probably because it was too scary.”

“Wait, Armand, he heard behind him but kept walking, ignoring the calls. Then he remembered what Emile had meant to him and still did. Did this one bad thing wipe everything else out?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.But not today. Gamache stopped.”