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"There are generally three parties to child abuse: the abused, the abuser and the bystander."
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"When you have police officers who abuse citizens, you erode public confidence in law enforcement. That makes the job of good police officers unsafe."

"The military is trying very hard right now to put a better face on Guantanamo, and I think they actually have tried to rid some of the extreme versions of abuse that we have read about."

"The interruption did nothing but earn her a similar slap, as I'm sure she knew it would. Sometimes I wondered if my mother spoke up at the wrong time on purpose. As often as we endured my father's abuse, she had to be aware that it wouldn't save me from a beating but simply earn her one as well. Or was it that sharing my fate made her feel less guilt-ridden about those things that happened to me?"

"You couldn't not notice the bruise on the side of her face. Or the hickey under her chin."

"The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody has severely undermined our Nation's position in the world."

"Rape, mutilation, abuse, and theft are the natural outcome of a world in which force rules, in which human beings are objects."

"The problem with depicting abusers as full-time monsters is that when a person is actually experiencing abuse in their own life, they'll think 'oh but he's the sweetest guy most of the time so he can't be an abuser ' or 'but he's not ALWAYS horrible, he's usually amazing, so he's not an abuser', and they'll make the mistake of thinking they mustn't really be being abused when they actually are."
Explore more quotes by Louise Penny

"Myrna could spend happy hours browsing bookcases. She felt if she could just get a good look at a person's bookcase and their grocery cart, she'd pretty much know who they were."

"I saw a lot of men die there. Most men. Do you know what killed them? Despair, said Finney. 'They believed themselves to be prisoners. I lived with those men, ate the same maggot-infested food, slept in the same beds, did the same back-breaking work. But they died and I lived. Do you know why? 'You were free. 'I was free. Milton was right the mind is its own place. I was never a prisoner. Not then, not now."

"To be silent. In hopes of not offending, in hopes of being accepted. But what happened to people who never spoke, never raised their voices? Kept everything inside?Gamache knew what happened. Everything they swallowed, every word, thought, feeling rattled around inside, hollowing the person out. And into that chasm they stuffed their words, their rage."

"Life is change. If you aren't growing and evolving, you're standing still, and the rest of the world is surging ahead."

"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 wouldnn'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."

"Where there is love there is courage,where there is courage there is peace,where there is peace there is God.And when you have God, you have everything."

"I was tired of seeing the Graces always depicted as beautiful young things. I think wisdom comes with age and life and pain. And knowing what matters."

"The reason Armand Gamache could go there was because it wasn't totally foreign to him. He knew it because he'd seen his own burned terrain, he'd walked off the familiar and comfortable path inside his own head and heart and seen what festered in the dark. And one day Jean Guy Beauvoir would look at his own monsters, and then be able to recognize others. And maybe this was the day and this was the case. He hoped so."

"Shakespeare: the best way to peace is to have a still and quiet conscience. Or none at all, thought Gamache."

"A lot of what we know to be history isn't it serves a purpose. Events are exaggerated, heroes fabricated, goals are rewritten to appear more noble than they actually were. All to manipulate public opinion, to manufacture a common purpose or enemy. And the cornerstone of a really great movement? A powerful symbol. Take away or tarnish that and everything starts to crumble, everything's questioned."
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