Quotes from Jim Butcher

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.

Wait. You work for me? I prefer to think of it as managing your incompetence.

Hell's bells. I don't call him the Fist of God as a pet name, folks.

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.

Sometimes it isn't easy to be sane, smart, and responsible. Sometimes it sucks. Sucks wang. Camel wang. But that doesn't turn wrong into right or stupid into smart.

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....

Right,' Thomas said. 'Where are we headed?' 'To where they treat me like royalty,' I said. 'We're going to Burger King?' I rubbed the heel of my hand against my forehead and spelled fratricide in a subvocal mutter, but I had to spell out temporary insanity and justifiable homicide, too, before I calmed down enough to speak politely. 'Just take a left and drive. Please.' 'Well,' Thomas said, grinning, 'since you said 'please' - Thomas Raith & Harry Dresden, Small Favor, Jim Butcher

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.

The next time I opened my eyes, I was in the morgue. This, all by itself, is enough to really ruin your day. I was lying on the examining table, and Butters, complete with his surgical gown and his tray of autopsy instruments, stood over me. 'I'm not dead!' I sputtered. 'I'm not dead!' - Harry Dresden, Death Masks, Jim Butcher

Bring it, Darth Bathrobe!

God save me from idealists.

Screw up my life? He stared at me for a second and then said, deadpan, I'm a five-foot-three, thirty-seven-year-old, single, Jewish medical examiner who needs to pick up his lederhosen from the dry cleaners so that he can play in a one-man polka band at Oktoberfest tomorrow. He pushed up his glasses with his forefinger, folded his arms, and said, Do your worst.

If you go to your death rather than do everything you might to prevent what is happening, you are merely committing suicide and trying to make yourself feel better about it. That is the act of a coward. It is beneath contempt.

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

Chocolate fends off all kinds of nasty stuff. And if you get hungry while warding off evil, you have a snack. It's multipurpose equipment.

Night wasn't so much falling as sharpening its claws.

I'm not a philosopher, Harry, [Michael] said. But here's something for you to think about, at least. What goes around comes around. And sometimes you get what's coming around. He paused for a moment, frowning faintly, pursing his lips. And sometimes you are what's coming around.

All right. Tell me what I'm looking at. From the improvised Rolling Stones T-shirt bag tied to my sash, Bob the Skull said, in his most caustic voice, A giant pair of cartoon lips. I muttered a curse and fumbled with the shirt until one of the skull's glowing orange eye sockets was visible. A big goofy magic nerd! Bob said.

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 are some people who will never understand what loyalty 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.

So? Bob said. Hat up, go kill her. Problem solved. Bob, I said. You can't just go around killing people. I know. That's why you should do it. No, no. I can't go around killing people, either.

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

I stared up at the Erlking, and with my typical pithy brilliance said, Uh-oh.

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.