Carl

“You couldn’t protect the people you loved – that was the lesson of history, and it struck him therefore that to love someone meant to be opened up to a radically heightened level of suffering.”
― Paul Murray, The Bee Sting

“Most of us are brought down by a bunch of tiny transgressions. Little things that add up until we collapse under them. It’s fairly easy to avoid doing the big bad things, but it’s the hundred mean little things that’ll get you eventually. If you listen to people long enough you realize it’s not the slap or the punch, but the whispered gossip, the dismissive look. The turned back. That’s what people with any conscience are ashamed of. That’s what they drink to forget.”
― Louise Penny, A Trick of the Light

“That's the past, isn't it. You think it's behind you, then one day you walk into a room and it's there waiting for you.”
― Paul Murray, The Bee Sting

“I had three chairs in my house: one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.”
― Louise Penny, The Brutal Telling