Jim Butcher

“You are a drug dealer. To tiny faeries. Shame."Sanya to Dresden”

“He's Gandalf on crack and an IV of Red Bull, with a big leather coat and a .44 revolver in his pocket.”

“Alone. It's one of those small words that means entirely too much. Like fear. Or trust.”

“Pain is to be endured. It ends or it does not.”

“When you die, do you want to feel ashamed of what you've done with your life? Feel ashamed of what your life meant?”

“The past was gone. Nothing could change what had already been. Looking back at it, letting its wounds fester, indulging in regret was just a different, slower way to die. The living moved forward.”

“Living was a dangerous past-time, and often quite painful—but there was also such joy in living, such beauty, things that one would otherwise never see, never experience, never know. The risk of pain and loss was a part of living.”

“Survival was not enough. One had to live.”

“When I'm in turmoil, when I can't think, when I'm exhausted and afraid and feeling very, very alone, I go for walks. It's just one of those things I do. I walk and I walk and sooner or later something comes to me, something to make me feel less like jumping off a building.”

“I can't believe I'm about to say this," I said. "So think real careful about where this is coming from. Have you people ever considered *talking* when you've got a problem?”

“It is the prerogative of wizards to be grumpy. It is not, however, the prerogative of freelance consultants who are late on their rent, so instead of saying something smart, I told the woman on the phone, "Yes, ma'am. How can I help you today?”

“- Did you really save the world ?...- Mostly I was saving my own ass. Just happend that the world was in the same spot.”

“Lies. Mab cannot change who you are.”

“On the whole, we're a murderous race. According to Genesis, it took as few as four people to make the planet too crowded to stand, and the first murder was a fratricide. Genesis says that in a fit of jealous rage, the very first child born to mortal parents, Cain, snapped and popped the first metaphorical cap in another human being. The attack was a bloody, brutal, violent, reprehensible killing. Cain's brother Abel probably never saw it coming. As I opened the door to my apartment, I was filled with a sense of empathic sympathy and intuitive understanding. For freaking Cain.”

“I don't know about your true form, but the weight of your ego sure is pushing the crust of the earth toward the breaking point.”

“Revenge is like sex, Mister Dresden. It's best when it comes on slow, quiet, until it all seems inexorable.”

“I lunged, low and quick, and drove about a foot of cold steel into his danglies. Hey, I don't care what kind of fearie or mortal or hideous creature you are. If you've got danglies, and can loose them, that's the kind of sight that makes you reconsider the possible genitalia-related ramifications of your actions real damned quick.”

“No rest for the wicked, Bob, and that means that we can't slack off either, or they'll outwork us.”

“I just stood there staring, because while I've seen a lot of weird things, I hadn't ever seen that.”

“Anyway, my office is small - one room, but on the corner, with a couple of windows. The sign on the door reads, simply, HARRY DRESDEN, WIZARD. Just inside the door is a table, covered with pamphlets with titles like: Magic and You, and Why Witches Don't Sink Any Faster Than Anyone Else - a Wizard's Perspective. I wrote most of them. I think it's important for we practitioners of the Art to keep up a good public image. Anything to avoid another Inquisition.”

“Isana laughed. "And you, lady? Are you a woman of conscience or of ambition?"The lady smiled. "That's a question rarely asked here at court.""And why is that?""Because a woman of conscience would tell you that she is a person of conscience. A woman of ambition would tell you that she is a person of conscience—only much more convincingly.”

“Love this job," Sanya murmured. "Just love it.""I need to challenge more people to duels," Thomas said in agreement."Men are pigs," Murphy said."Amen," said Molly.Lea gave me a prim look and said, "I've not sacrificed a holy virgin in ages.”

“Let come the forces of night! We will stand!" "We will get the hell out of here is what we will do," I muttered.”

“Pain isn’t a lot of fun, at least not for most folks, but it is utterly unique to life. Pain — physical, emotional, and otherwise — is the shadow cast by everything you want out of life, the alternative to the result you were hoping for, and the inevitable creator of strength. From the pain of our failures we learn to be better, stronger, greater than what we were before. Pain is there to tell us when we’ve done something badly—it’s a teacher, a guide, one that is always there to both warn us of our limitations and challenge us to overcome them.For something no one likes, pain does us a whole hell of a lot of good.”

“It was never too late to learn something. The past is unalterable in any event. The future is the only thing we can change. Learning the lessons of the past is the only way to shape the present and the future.”

“I may have had good reasons. I may have had the best of intentions.But intentions aren’t enough, no matter how good they are. Intentions can lead you to a place where you’re able to make a choice.It’s the choice that counts.”

“There is no spoon. I am completely spoonless over here.”

“Bob wasn't precisely a friend to me but... I was used to him. In a way he was family, the mouthy, annoying, irritable cousin who was always insulting you but who was definitely at Thanksgiving dinner. I had never considered the possibility that one day he might be something else.”

“My brief flash of relief and confidence melted away. Good thing it did, too. I'm sure the world would come to an end if I were allowed to feel a sense of relief and well-being for any length of time.”

“Likest thou jelly within thy doughnut?""Nay, but prithee, with sprinkles 'pon it instead, I said solemnly, and frosting of white.”

“My head was throbbing, and my hands were shaking, but I went down the ladder to my workroom - and started figuring out how to rip someone's heart out of his chest from fifty miles away.Who says I never do anything fun on a Friday night?”

“The cold rain came down in buckets. I was shaking, shivering, and naked, and more soap was getting into my eyes. But hey. At least I was clean.”

“Sticks and stones and small caliber bullets may break my bones... Words will never, et cetera.”

“There's power in the night. There's terror in the darkness. Despite all our accumulated history, learning, and experience, we remember. We remember times when we were too small to reach the light switch on the wall, and when darkness itself was enough to make us cry out in fear....”

“Star Trek?” I asked her. “Really?” “What?” she demanded, bending unnaturally black eyebrows together. “There are two kinds of people in the universe, Molly,” I said. “Star Trek fans and Star Wars fans. This is shocking.” She sniffed. “This is the post-nerd-closet world, Harry. It’s okay to like both.” “Blasphemy and lies,” I said.”

“Gandalf never had this kind of problem. He had exactly this problem, actually, standing in front of the hidden Dwarf door to Moria. Remember when . . . I sighed. Sometimes my inner monologue annoys even me. “Edro, edro,” I muttered. “Open.” I rubbed at the bridge of my nose and ventured, “Mellon.” Nothing happened. The wards stayed. I guessed the Corpsetaker had never read Tolkien. Tasteless bitch.”

“Isana stared at Gaius for a moment. Then she said, "How can you live with yourself?"The First Lord stared at her for a moment, his eyes cold. Then he spoke in a very quiet, precise, measured voice. "I look out my window each day. I look out my window at people who live and breathe. At people who have not been devoured by civil war. At people who have not been ravaged by disease. At people who have not starved to death, who have not been hacked apart by enemies of humanity, at people who are free to lie and steal and plot and complain and accuse and behave in all manner of repugnant ways because the Realm stands. Because law and order stands. Because something other than simple violence shapes the course of their lives. And I look, wife of my son, mother of my heir, at a very few decent people who have had the luxury of living their lives without being called upon to make hideous decisions I would not wish upon my worst enemies, and who consequently find such matters morally appalling when they consider them--because they have not had to be the ones who dealt with them." He took a short, hard swallow of wine. "Feh. Aquitaine thinks me his enemy. The fool. If I truly hated him, I'd give him the Crown.”

“At the moment I was mad enough to chew up nails and spit out paper clips.”

“God isn't about making good things happen to you, or bad things happen to you. He's all about you making choices--exercising the gift of free will. God wants you to have good things and a good life, but He won't gift wrap them for you. You have to choose the actions that lead you to that life.”

“Dresden’s not gone,” I said. I touched a hand lightly to my brow. “He’s here.” I touched Will’s bare chest, on the left side. “Here. Without him, without what he’s done over the years, you and I would never have been able to pull this off.”“No,” he agreed. “Probably not. Definitely not.”“There are a lot of people he’s taught. Trained. Defended. And he’s been an example. No single one of us can ever be what he was. But together, maybe we can.”

“Don't yadda yadda the Lord, Harry. It's disrespectful.”

“Thomas has the kind of whiter-than-white boyish grin that makes women's panties spontaneously evaporate.”

“You must be Warden Ramirez."This is the part where I got nervous. Ramirez loved women. Ramirez never shut up about women. Well, he never shut up about anything in general, but he'd go on and on about various conquests and feats of sexual athleticism and—"A virgin?" Lara blurted. Lara blurted. She turned her head to me, grey eyes several shades paler than they had been, and very wide. "Really, Harry, I'm not sure what to say. Is he a present?”

“Doroga thumped a finger against his skull. Head got nothing to do with the heart. Your heart wants what it wants. Head got to learn that it can only kill the heart or else get out of the way”

“Because a sound tree doesn't have bad roots, Amara. No enterprise of greatnessbegins with treachery, with lying to the people who trust and love you”

“There are some people who will never understand whatloyalty means. They could tell you what it was, of course, but they will never know.They will never see it from the inside. They couldn't imagine a world where something like that was real.”

“I could buy that she would murder me in a fit of rage, poison me out of flaming jealousy, or bomb my car out of sheer, stubborn pique. But she would never do it and feel nothing.”

“Hell's holy stars and freaking stones shit bells.”

“Dammit, Dresden, if you want to know about me, wait for the autobiography like everyone else.”

“Sometimes I forget how much I like riding the bike." Most chicks do," I said. "Roar of the engine and so on."Murphy's blue eyes glittered with annoyance and anticipation. "Pig. You really enjoy dropping all women together in the same demographic, don't you?" It's not my fault all women like motorcycles, Murph. They're basically huge vibrators. With wheels.”