Jim Butcher Quotations | Page 3

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.

The impossible we do immediately. The unimaginable takes a little while.

You're in America now," I said. "Our idea of diplomacy is showing up with a gun in one hand and a sandwich in the other and asking which you'd prefer.

Sleep is God. Go worship.

You know how confusing the whole good-evil concept is for me.

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

You don't take your cat with you to go bird shopping. Not because the cat isn't polite, but because he's a cat.

Most of the bad guys in the real world don't know that they are bad guys. You don't get a flashing warning sign that you're about to damn yourself. It sneaks up on you when you aren't looking.

I died. I died and someone made a clerical error and I am in Heaven.

Mister Dresden," he said. "And Miss Rodriguez, I believe. I didn't realize you were an art collector." "I am the foremost collector of velvet Elvii in the city of Chicago," I said at once. "Elvii?" Marcone inquired. "The plural could be Elvises, I guess," I said. "But if I say that too often, I start muttering to myself and calling things 'my precious,' so I usually go with the Latin plural.

I'd made the vampire cry. Great. I felt like a real superhero. Harry Dresden, breaker of monsters' hearts.

Life is a journey. Time is a river. The door is ajar

Because nothing says flattery like a gun to the head.

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

Life is full of toil, sacrifice, and pain, and from the time we stop growing, we know that we've begun dying. We watch helplessly as year by year, our bodies age and fail, while our survival instincts compel us to keep on going-which means living with the terrifying knowledge that ultimately death is inescapable.

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.

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.

Every soul is special. They’re all beautiful. They’re all far more significant than anyone on this rock realizes. I think when people are at their best, they’re acting in accordance with their soul. The ones who have gone bad don’t have bad souls. They’ve just given up on keeping in touch with them.

Jump into an open grave? What kind of idiot are you?" Butters replied. "I might as well put on a red shirt and volunteer for the away team. There's snow and ice and slippery mud down there. That's like asking for an ironically broken neck.

So we get a plan," I said. "Any suggestions?" "Blow up the building," Kincaid said without looking up. "That works good for vampires. Then soak what's left in gasoline. Set it on fire. Then blow it all up again." "For future reference, I was sort of hoping for a suggestion that didn't sound like it came from that Bolshevik Muppet with all the dynamite.

Fire isn't always an element of destruction. Classical alchemical doctrine teaches that it also has dominion over another province: change.

In the name of the Pizza Lord. Charge!

A pure heart and mind only takes you so far - sooner or later the hormones have their say, too.

I felt my face stretch in a victorious smile. The potion had worked. I was inside. I had to suppress an urge to break into a soft shoe routine. Sometimes being able to use magic was so cool.

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.

There is the world that should be and the world that is. We live in one and must create the other.

Ah. Medieval-style ransom.” Toot looked confused. “He did run some, but I stopped him, my lord. Like, just now. In front of you. Right over there.” There were several conspicuous sounds behind me, the loudest from my apprentice, and I turned to eye everyone else. They were all either covering smiles or holding them back— poorly. “Hey, peanut gallery,” I said. “This isn’t as easy as I’m making it look.” “You’re doing fine,” Karrin said, her eyes twinkling. I sighed. “Come on, Toot,” I said, and walked over to Hook.

There are bad things in the world. There's no getting away from that. But that doesn't mean nothing can be done about them. You can't abandon life just because it's scary, and just because sometimes you get hurt.

She studied my face for a long minute. "Are you going to help my mom?" It was a simple question. But how do you tell a child that things just aren't that simple, that some questions don't have simple answers--or any answer at all?

Now I feel like James Bond. Suave and intelligent, breaking all the codes while looking fabulous.

I ask people impertinent questions. Hopefully turning up pertinent answers.

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.

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....

Loneliness is a hard thing to handle. I feel it, sometimes. When I do, I want it to end. Sometimes, when you're near someone, when you touch them on some level that is deeper than the uselessly structured formality of casual civilized interaction, there's a sense of satisfaction in it. Or at least, there is for me. It doesn't have to be someone particularly nice. You don't have to like them. You don't even have to want to work with them. You might even want to punch them in the nose. Sometimes just making that connection is its own experience, its own reward.

I've always felt that the best whips and chains are in the mind. With a little creativity, the physical ones are hardly necessary.

Regardless of what I think about Islam or Wicca or any other religion, the fact is that it's a group of people. Every faith has its ceremonies. And since it's made up of people, every faith also has its assholes.

I would hit you on the head with a rock and drag you away from this. But it would only shatter the rock.

Paranoia is a survival trait when you run in my circles. It gives you something to do in your spare time, coming up with solutions to ridiculous problems that aren't ever going to happen. Except when one of them does, at which point you feel way too vindicated. - Harry Dresden, Changes, Jim Butcher

Growing up is all about getting hurt. And then getting over it. You hurt. You recover. You move on. Odds are pretty good you're just going to get hurt again. But each time, you learn something.

The fire of my tribulations had not simply been pain to be endured. It had been an agent of transformation. After all that I'd been through, I'd changed. Not for the worse, I was pretty sure--at least not yet. But only a moron or a freaking lunatic could have faced the things I had and remained unfazed by them.

Son. Everyone dies alone. That's what it is. It's a door. It's one person wide. When you go through it, you do it alone. But it doesn't mean you've got to be alone before you go through the door. And believe me, you aren't alone on the other side.

We all must die. There is no better way to do so than in the pursuit of something you love.

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

Nearly everyone underestimates how powerful the touch of another person's hand can be. The need to be touched is something so primal, so fundamentally a part of our existence as human beings that its true impact upon us can be difficult to put into words. That power doesn't necessarily have anything to do with sex, either. From the time we are infants, we learn to associate the touch of a human hand with safety, with comfort, with love.

Everyone is down on pain, because they forget something important about it: Pain is for the living. Only the dead don't feel it. (Harry Dresden)

Survival was not enough. One had to live.

Whenever you've got a choice, do good, kiddo. It isn't always fun or easy, but in the long run it makes your life better.

You need a prostate to understand,” I said.

My office is in a building in midtown Chicago. It's an older building, and not in the best of shape, especially since there was that problem with the elevator last year. I don't care what anyone says, that wasn't my fault. when a giant scorpion the size of an Irish wolfhound is tearing its way through the roof of your elevator car, you get real willing to take desperate measures.

Paradox is an overrated threat. There is...a quality similar to inertia at work. Once an event has occurred, there is an extremely strong tendency for that event to occur. The larger, more significant, or more energetic the event, the more it tends to remain as it originally happened, despite any interference." I frowned. "There's...a law of conservation of history?

You're such a cynic," Molly said. "I think cynics are playful and cute.

I don't have anything against God. Far from it. But I don't understand Him. And I don't trust a lot of the people that go around claiming that they're working in His best interests. Faeries and vampires and whatnot -- those I can fathom. Even demons. Sometimes, even the Fallen. I can understand why they do what they do. But I don't understand God. I don't understand how he could see the way people treat one another, and not chalk up the whole human race as a bad idea

It was one of those moments that would have had dramatic music if my life were a movie, but instead I got a radio jingle for some kind of submarine sandwich place blaring over the store's ambient stereo. The movie of my life must be really low-budget.

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

Thwart," I said. "To prevent someone from accomplishing something by means of visiting gratuitous violence upon his smarmy person." "I'm pretty sure that isn't the definition." Sarissa said. "It is today.

You rush a miracle worker, you get lousy miracles!

There are old swordsmen and bold swordsmen. But few old, bold swordsmen.

I've been a young man. Boobs are near the center of the universe, until you turn twenty-five or so. Which is also when young men's auto insurance rates go down. This is not a coincidence.

I know it's not thematically in tune with my new job and all, but I find it effective. Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day," I say. "But set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life. Tao of Pratchett. I live by it.

Worry is fear in disguise. And fear will eat you from the inside out if you let it.

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

Love is patient. Love is kind. Love always forgives, trusts, supports, and endures. Love never fails. When every star in the heavens grows cold, and when silence lies once more on the face of the deep, three things will endure: faith, hope, and love.

My magic. That was at the heart of me. It was a manifestation of what I believed, what I lived. It came from my desire to see to it that someone stood between the darkness and the people it would devour.

Fear is a part of life. It's a warning mechanism. That's all. It tells you when there's danger around. Its job is to help you survive. Not cripple you into being unable to do it.

Sometimes I think that's where most of us are. Fighting off the crazy as best we can. Trying to become something better than we were. It's that second bit that's important.

Everything was perfectly healthy and normal here in Denial Land.

Molly, you are a good person. Don't let anyone take that away from you. Not even yourself.

He had hard, steady eyes, and all the comforting, reassuring charm of a dental drill. - Harry Dresden describing Morgan

Life would be unbearably dull if we had answers to all our questions.

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

There should be a rule against your own inner monologue throwing around that much sarcasm.

I like to stay cozy with my paranoia, not pass her around to my friends and family.

I love watching him think," Maeve told Lily. "You can almost hear that poor little hamster running and running on its wheel.

Keep it up, wise guy. I'm always going to be taller than you once you're lying unconscious on the ground.

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

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

It turns out that Molly wasn't her mother's daughter in that respect. Charity was like the MacGuyver of the kitchen. She could whip up a five-course meal for twelve from an egg, two spaghetti noodles, some household chemicals, and a stick of chewing gum. Molly ... Molly once burned my egg. My boiled egg. I don't know how.

Man. Being mostly dead is hard on a guy.

He gave me a severe look over his spectacles and said, as if he thought the words were deadly venom and might kill me, "You are an untidy person.

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.

You don't go walking into the proverbial lion's den lightly. You start with a good breakfast.

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

There is, I think, humor here which does not translate well from English into sanity.

Life can be confusing. Good God, and how. Sometimes it seems like the older I get, the more confused I become. That seems ass-backwards. I thought I was supposed to be getting wiser. Instead, I just keep getting hit over the head with my relative insignificance in the greater scheme of the universe. Confusing, life. But it beats the hell out of the alternative.

I checked my gear, my pockets, my shoelaces, and realized that I had crossed the line between making sure I was ready and trying to postpone the inevitable.

Sometimes I hate having a conscience, and a stupidly thorough sense of honor.

And you've got that look on your face again." "I can't help it, "Ehren said. "You're about to walk to breakfast, arn't you, regardless of who is in the way?" "Yes," Tavi said. Ehren sighed. "Let's hear it." Tavi told him the plan. "That's insane," Ehren said. "It could work." "You arn't going to have anyone come along to bail you out this time," Ehren pointed out. Tavi grinned. "Are you with me?" "The plan is insane," Ehren said. "You are insane." He looked around inside the tent. "I'll need some pants.

I believe that there's a cloud for every silver lining,' I said.

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 they would call "hard but necessary" for the good of their nation. We're all the hero of our own story.

Pain is a byproduct of life. That’s the truth. Life sometimes sucks. That’s true for everyone. But if you don’t face the pain and the suck, you don’t ever get the other things either. Laughter. Joy. Love. Pain passes, but those things are worth fighting for. Worth dying for.

The wacky thing about those bad guys is that you can't count on them to be obvious. They forget to wax their mustaches and goatees, leave their horns at home, send their black hats to the dry cleaner's. They're funny like that.

Do you want your blood to stay where it is sochar-lar?" Tavi lifted both eyebrows at the unfamiliar word, and glanced at Varg. "Monkey," Varg supplied, in Aleran. "And male-child." "He called me monkey boy?" Tavi asked.

People love dogs. You can never go wrong adding a dog to the story.

There're things we keep hidden from one another. Things we hide from ourselves. Things that are kept hidden from us. And things no one knows. You always learn the damnedest things at the worst possible times.

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?

Tavi grinned. "Are you with me?" "The plan is insane," Ehren said. "YOU are insane." He looked around the inside of the tent. "I'll need some pants.

Time after time, history demonstrates that when people don't want to believe something, they have enormous skills of ignoring it altogether.

We have now left Reason and Sanity Junction. Next stop, Looneyville.

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

Laugh whenever you can. Keeps you from killing yourself when things are bad. That and vodka.