Jim Butcher

“I had a vague memory of being that ridiculous at one time. Let he who hath never worn parachute pants cast the first stone.”

“I wouldn't burden any decent system of faith by participating in it... I'm not agnostic. Just nonpartisan. Theological Switzerland, that's me.”

“My faith protects me. My Kevlar helps.”

“There aren't any magical words, really. Words just hold the magic.”

“No, Bob. Just no. For crying out loud. She's seventeen. Better move quick, then, Bob said. Before anything starts to droop. Taste of perfection while you can, that's what I always say......The perverted little creep has a point, my host.”

“I checked the icebox. The faeries usually brought some sort of food to stock the icebox and the pantry when they cleaned, but they could have mighty odd ideas about what constituted a healthy diet. One time I'd opened the pantry and found nothing but boxes and boxes and boxes of Fruit Loops. I had a near-miss with diabetes, and Thomas, who was never quite sure where the food had come from, declared that I had clearly been driven Fruit Loopy.”

“Last year in the U.S. alone more than nine hundred thousand people were reported missing and not found...That's out of three hundred million, total population. That breaks down to about one person in three hundred and twenty-five vanishing. Every year....Maybe it's a coincidence, but it's almost the same loss ratio experienced by herd animals on the African savannah to large predators.”

“The best thing about my faerie godmother is that the creepy just keeps on coming.”

“Oh," the girl said, shaking her head. "Don't be so simple. People adore monsters. They fill their songs and stories with them. They define themselves in relation to them. You know what a monster is, young shade? Power. Power and choice. Monsters make choices. Monsters shape the world. Monsters force us to become stronger, smarter, better. They sift the weak from the strong and provide a forge for the steeling of souls. Even as we curse monsters, we admire them. Seek to become them, in some ways." Her eyes became distant. "There are far, far worse things to be than a monster.”

“As far as the Council is concerned, the U.S. Wardens are a bunch of mushrooms.""Eh?""Kept in the dark and fed on bullshit.”

“I hate what you represent."... "Power without conviction." Isana replied, her tone lifeless, matter of fact. "Ambition without conscience. Decent folk suffer at the hands of those like you.”

“For me chivalry isn't dead; it's an involuntary reflex.”

“Isana felt her throat tighten. "We failed." Serai lifted her chin and patted Isana's arm firmly."We have not yet succeeded. There is a difference.”

“Sometimes the only way to carry a heavy burden is to share it with another”

“Hell's Bells-Harry Dresden”

“Knowledge is your weapon...Kill them with it.”

“Life is easier when you can write off others as monsters, demon, as horrible threats that must be hated and feared the thing is you can't do that without becoming them, just a little.”

“Oh, what would you like on your vegetarian pizza?" "Dead pigs and cows," I said. She glanced up at me and wrinkled her nose. "They're vegetarians," I said defensively.”

“For some reason, she didn't want to take the motorcycle, so that left my car, the ever trusty (almost always) Blue Beetle, in old-school VW Bug that had seen me through one nasty scrape after another. More than once, it had been pounded badly, but always it had risen to do battle once more – if by battle one means driving somewhere at a sedate speed, without much acceleration and only middling gas mileage.”

“Pretty please. With sugar.”

“It always shocked me how you could understand so many things and be such a complete idiot about so many others.”

“Some things just aren't meant to go together. Things like oil and water. Orange juice and toothpaste.”

“My friend is going to save a little girl from monsters. I am going with him. That's what friends do.”

“What's with that?” Butters screamed, his voice high and frightened. “Just covering his head with his arms? Didn't he see the lawyer in the movie?”

“Sometimes the most remarkable things seem commonplace. I mean when you think about it jet travel is pretty freaking remarkable. You get in a plane it defies the gravity of a entire planet by exploiting a loophole with air pressure and it flies across distances that would take months or years to cross by any means of travel that has been significant for more than a century or three. You hurtle above the earth at enough speed to kill you instantly should you bump into something and you can only breathe because someone built you a really good tin can that seems tight enough to hold in a decent amount of air. Hundreds of millions of man-hours of work and struggle and research blood sweat tears and lives have gone into the history of air travel and it has totally revolutionized the face of our planet and societies.But get on any flight in the country and I absolutely promise you that you will find someone who in the face of all that incredible achievement will be willing to complain about the drinks.”

“Karrin smiled faintly and shook her head. "He always said you knew ghosts. You're sure it was really him?"Mort eyed her. "Me and everyone else, yeah."Karrin scowled and stared into the middle distance.Mort frowned and then his expression softened. "You didn't want it to be his ghost. Did you?"Murphy shook her head slowly, but said nothing."You needed everyone to be wrong about it. Because if it really was his ghost," Mort said, "it means that he really is dead."Murphy's face...just crumpled. Her eyes overflowed and she bowed her head. Her body shook in silence.”

“You're just going to stand there?" I asked.Uriel folded his arms and tapped his chin with one fingertip. "Mmmm. It does seem that perhaps she deserves some form of aid. Perhaps if I'd had the presence of mind to see to it that some sort of agent had been sent to balance the scales, to giver her that one tiny bit of encouragement, that one flicker of inspiration that turned the tide..." He shook his head sadly. "Things might be different now."And, as if on cue, Mortimer Lindquist, ectomancer, limped out of the lower hallway and into the electrical-junction room, with Sir Stuart's shade at his right hand.Mort took a look around, his dark eyes intent, and then his gaze locked onto Molly."Hey," he croaked. "You. Arrogant bitch ghost.”

“Everything I told him was technically true, more or less, and I got the job done," Jack said stubbornly. "Look, sir, if I were perfect, I wouldn't be working here in the first place. Now, would I?"And then he hung up. On speakerphone. On a freaking archangel.I couldn't help it. I let out a rolling belly laugh. "I just got suckered into doing this by...Stars and stones, you didn't even know that he...Big bad angel boy, and you get the wool pulled over your eyes by..." I stopped trying to talk and just laughed.Uriel eyed the phone, then me, and then tucked the little device away again, clearly nonplussed. "It doesn't matter how well I believe I know your kind, Harry. They always manage to find some way to try my patience.”

“And it was all your fault, Harry.”

“No,” she said. “You are not Patrick Swayze. I am not Demi Moore.” She touched a switch on the little box and it started ticking. “And this sure as hell isn't pottery class.”

“But I am dead certain--ba-dump-bump-ching--that I'm the first guy to lead an army of spirits in an assault from the spirit-world side...and had them start off screaming, "BOO!”

“Which man, Fitz?" I asked quietly.”

“You're one hell of a woman, Molly,” I said. “Thank you.”

“That...that bitch.”

“Maybe my values are outdated, but I come from an old school of thought. I think that men ought to treat women like something other than just shorter, weaker men with breasts. Try and convict me if I’m a bad person for thinking so. I enjoy treating a woman like a lady, opening doors for her, paying for shared meals, giving flowers–all that sort of thing.”

“You don’t have to run faster than the bear to get away. You just have to run faster than the guy next to you.”

“For the sake of one soul. For one loved one. For one life." I called power into my blasting rod, and its tip glowed incandescent white. "The way I see it, there's nothing else worth fighting a war for.”

“I didn't know this before, but as it turns out, Tyrannosaurs can really haul ass.”

“Ease off the martyr throttle.”

“...as nervous as a bird in a coal mine.”

“The world is getting weirder. Darker every single day. Things are spinning around faster and faster, and threatening to go completely awry. Falcons and falconers. The center cannot hold. But in my corner of the country, I'm trying to nail things down. I don't want to live in Victor's jungle, even if it did eventually devour him. I don't want to live in a world where the strong rule and the weak cower. I'd rather make a place where things are a little quieter. Where trolls stay the hell under their bridges and where elves don't come swooping out to snatch children from their cradles. Where vampires respect the limits, and where the faeries mind their p's and q's. My name is Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden. Conjure by it at your own risk. When things get strange, when what goes bump in the night flicks on the lights, when no one else can help you, give me a call. I'm in the book.”

“The noise was deafening, and no one could have heard me anyway as I let out my own battle cry, which I figured was worth a shot. What the hell."I DON'T BELIEVE IN FAERIES!”

“When I finally got tired of arguing with her and decided to write a novel as if I was some kind of formulaic, genre writing drone, just to prove to her how awful it would be, I wrote the first book of the Dresden Files.”

“Whatever had killed him, it hadn't been human. His face was gone, simply torn away. Something had ripped his lips off. I could see his bloodstained teeth. His nose had been torn all the way up one side, and part of it dangled toward the floor. His head was misshapen, as though some enormous pressure had been put upon his temples, warping his skull in.”

“Well. We’ll just have to hope that this wasn’t a loup-garou, I guess.” “If it was a louper, you’d know,” Bob said wisely. “In the middle of this town, you’d have a dozen people dead every time the full moon came around. What’s going on?” “A dozen people are dying every time the full moon comes around.”

“And I knew that there was some dark corner of me that would enjoy using magic for killing—and then long for more. That was black magic, and it was easy to use. Easy and fun. Like Legos”

“So there I was being strangled by a ranting, half-naked madman in the middle of the woods, with a she-werewolf dangling from a rope snare somewhere nearby.”

“I hadn't gotten beaten up twice, shot, and nearly strangled to get taken out by a misguided werewolf bitch.”

“Oh, I get it," I said. "You're Evil Harry, lurking inside Good Harry. Right? And you only come out at night?”

“Your face looks like a sack of purple potatoes”