Jim Butcher

“If you make some comment even obliquely alluding to menstruation or menopause and its effect on my judgment," Murphy interrupted, "I will break your arm in eleven places.”

“Hope is a force of nature. Don't let anyone tell you different.”

“I'm not a Wiccan. I'm not big on churches of any kind, despite the fact that I've spoken, face-to-face, with an archangel of the Almighty.But there were some things I believed in. Some things I had faith in. And faith isn't about perfect attendance to services, or how much money you put on the little plate. It isn't about going skyclad to the Holy Rites, or meditating each day upon the divine.Faith is about what you do. It's about aspiring to be better and nobler and kinder than you are. It's about making sacrifices for the good of others--even when there's not going to be anyone telling you what a hero you are.Faith is a power of its own, and one even more elusive and difficult to define than magic.”

“She frowned at me. "You need some rest. You look like hell. And you're obviously tired enough to have gotten the giggles."Wizards don't giggle," I said, hardly able to speak. "This is cackling.”

“Murphy hung up and I said, to the still-open line, "Hey, if you've got someone watching my place, could you call the cops if anyone tries to steal my Star Wars poster? It's an original."Then I vindictively hung up on the FBI. It made my inner child happy.”

“They say you can know a man by his enemies, Dresden." He smiled, and laughter lurked beneath his next words, never quite surfacing. "You defy beings that should cow you into silence. You resist forces that are inevitable for no more reason than that you believe they should be resisted. You bow your head to neither demons nor angels, and you put yourself in harm's way to defend those who cannot defend themselves." He nodded slowly. "I think I like you.”

“I'm trying to be diplomatic. The wisdom of my ass is well-known. If I didn't lip off to them, after shooting my mouth off to faerie queens and Vampire Courts--plural, Courts--demigods and demon lords, they might get their feelings hurt.”

“One can have only as much preparation as he has foresight.”

“Just remember that you're on my list, Marcone. Soon as I get done with all the other evils in this town, you won't be the lesser of them anymore."Marcone stared at me with half-lidded eyes and said, "Eek.”

“Life is too short, Harry. And there's nowhere near enough joy in it. If you find it, grab it. Before it's gone.”

“Murphy watched me thoughtfully for several empty seconds. Then she said, very gently, "You're a good man, Harry."I swallowed and bowed my head, made humble by the tone of her voice and the expression on her face, more than the words themselves.Not always rational," she said, smiling. "But you're the best kind of crazy.”

“I choose my battles, Dresden. Not you." She looked up at me calmly. "Let me put this in terms that will get through your skull: My friend is going to save a child from monsters. I'm going with him. That's what friends do, Harry.”

“Ack!" I said.Fearless master of the witty dialogue, that's me.”

“The man once wrote: Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger. Tolkien had that one mostly right.I stepped forward, let the door bang closed, and snarled, "Fuck subtle.”

“Harry," she said quietly, "I know you must be angry."I burn things to ash and smash holes in buildings when I'm angry," I said. "I'm a couple of steps past that point right now.”

“Something like this will test you like nothing else," Mac said. "You're going to find out who you are, Harry. You're going to find out which principles you'll stand by to your death--and which lines you'll cross." He took my empty glass away and said, "You're heading into the badlands. It'll be easy to get lost.”

“Tiny, but fierce!”

“You," Madeline said, her voice hollow and wheezing, "are like a bad case of herpes, wizard. You're inconvenient, embarassing, no real threat, and you simply will not go away.”

“For the record, surgeries aren't pretty. there's a hideous sense of intimately inappropriate exposure to another human being, and it feel something like accidentally walking in on a naked parent. Only there's more gore. Bits are exposed that just shouldn't be out in the open, and they're covered in blood. Its embarrassing, disgusting, and unsettling all at the same time." Harry Dresden, Turn Coat.”

“Harry Dresden. Saving the world, one act of random destruction at a time.”

“Nobody can be bad at everything. There’s no such thing as a perfect screwup.”

“Honey, I liked the Harry Potter movies, too, but that doesn’t mean I ran out and got a Dark Mark tattooed onto my left forearm like you did.”

“Never touch my brother on his fucking birthday.”

“Any time I’m not shooting my mouth off to a clichéd, two-bit creature of the night like you, it’s because I’m up to something.”

“I let out a battle cry. Sure, a lot of people might have mistaken it for a sudden yelp of unmanly fear, but trust me. It was a battle cry.”

“I have nightmares about hell, where all I do is add up numbers and try to have conversations with people like you.”

“Karrin Murphy led the charge, and Sanya and I tried to keep up. She went through that sea of foes like a little speedboat, her enemies spun and tossed and turned and disoriented in her wake. Sanya and I hacked our way through stunned foes, pushing and chopping with unsophisticated brutality-and that big Russian lunatic just kept laughing the whole time.”

“Here had lived someone else who knew that the only thing waiting at home was a sense of loneliness.Sometimes it is comforting.Most often, it isn't.”

“People have far more power than they realize, if they would only choose to use it.”

“Yeah, but I forgot to take my George Orwell-shaped multivitamins along with my breakfast bowl of Big Brother Os this morning.”

“I felt like I had just double-tapped Santa.”

“Thank God for wisecracks.”

“I think that men ought to treat women like something other than weaker men with breasts.”

“Where instinct fails, intellect must venture.”

“Ignorance is more than bliss, it's freaking orgasmic ecstacy!”

“Of course Evil's afoot. If it had switched to the metric system it'd be up to a meter by now. ”

“Have you ever felt despair? Absolute hopelessness? Have you ever stood in the darkness and known, deep in your heart, in your spirit, that it was never, ever going to get better? That something had been lost, forever, and that it wasn't coming back?”

“And thrice do I say to thee...bite me.”

“If I need you I'll give you a signal.''What signal?''I'll imitate the scream of a terrified little girl”

“Marcone's scum, but he's his own scum" -Harry Dresden”

“Are you always a smartass?'Nope. Sometimes I'm asleep.”

“Its amazing waht you can get used to if your daily allowance of bizarre is high enough.'......Harry Dresden”

“Kids. You gotta love them. I adore children. A little salt, a squeeze of lemon--perfect.”

“Everyone is down on pain, because they forget one important thing about it: Pain is for the living. Only the dead don't feel it. Pain is a part of life. Sometimes it's a big part, and sometimes it isn't, but either way, it's part of the big puzzle, the deep music, the great game. Pain does two things: It teaches you, tells you that you're alive. Then it passes away and leaves you changed. It leaves you wiser, sometimes. Sometimes it leaves you stronger. Either way, pain leaves its mark, and everything important that will ever happen to you in life is going to involve it in one degree or another.”

“I had to smile at the man. I mean, you have to smile at idiots and children.”

“No one is an unjust villain in his own mind. Even - perhaps even especially - those who are the worst of us. Some of the cruelest tyrants in history were motivated by noble ideals, or made choices that they would call 'hard but necessary steps' for the good of their nation. We're all the hero of our own story.”

“There's a fine line between audacity and idiocy.”

“I guess maybe you don’t get to be the Merlin of the White Council by saving up frequent-flier miles”

“I love being a wizard. Every day is like Disneyland.”

“Gruff,” I said, “I find myself largely clueless about why mortal women do what they do. It will take a wiser man than me to understand what’s in a fae woman’s mind.”