Quotes from Jim Butcher

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?

And suddenly a shaft of blinding silver-white light three feet long sprang from the broken hilt of Fidelacchius and shone in the first golden light of that day's dawn, humming with the full power of the Sword, only louder now, more melodic, and physically audible.

I did the only thing any reasonable wizard could have done. I turned around and ran like hell.

If I lived through the next day or so, I needed to start keeping track of where these jokers liked to get their bloodthirsty freak on. It might give me an edge someday. Or at least a list of places that could use a nice burning down. I hadn't burned down a building in ages.

Magic. It can get a guy killed.

You don't have to make fun of it. Actually I do, I said. I make fun of almost everything.

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

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.

Butters, rumbled Skaldi Hair Ball. If he really had broken fingers, it didn't look like they were bothering him much. When are you going to get in this ring and train like a man? About five minutes after I get a functional lightsaber, Butters replied easily, much to Hair Ball's amusement.

Okay, I said to Karrin. Let's move. Uh, she asked, without turning her head. move where? The island, I said. Harry, this is a motorcycle. It'll work, I said. Look at it. Karrin jerked as she noted the appearance of the Harley. You want me to drive into the lake. You have to admit, I said, it isn't the craziest thing I've ever asked you to do. It isn't even the craziest thing I've asked you to do tonight .

I'm a wizard. That means I have power, and power and responsibility go hand in hand.

Give it to 'em! Take 'em down! First Aleran! Kick their furry-- Assault formation!

They paid some madman who thought he was a decorator a lot of money to make the place look hip and unique. May be it's my lack of fashion sense talking, but I thought they should have held out for one of those gorillas who has learned to paint. The results would have been of similar quality, and they could have paid in fresh produce. - Harry Dresden, Small Favor, Jim Butcher

Could a man's heart, his soul, perish and yet leave him walking and talking as if alive?

After a few minutes, Molly came partway up the short ladder to the bridge and stopped. Do I need to ask permission to come up there or something? Why would you? I asked. She considered. It's what they do on Star Trek ?

I folded my arms. "I don't usually do stakeouts." "I thought it might be a nice change of pace for you. All that knocking down of doors and burning down of buildings must get tiring." "I don't always knock down doors," I said. "Sometimes it's a wall.

The world always thinks that the destruction of a physical vessel is victory," he said quietly. "But the Savior was more than merely cells and tissue and chemical compounds—and Fidelacchius is more than wood and steel.

She bowed her head and said, Lord of hosts, please stand with us against this darkness. The quiet, bedrock-deep energy of true faith brushed against me. Murphy echoed the gesture and the amen. Thomas and I tried to look theologically invisible.

I leaned my head back on the couch and closed my eyes. I'm not sure what to do next. How are you as a sounding board? I can look interested and nod at appropriate moments, he said. Good enough, I said.

I had to maintain a fine balance between going in ready for trouble and going in asking for trouble.

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.

Thomas said] I have my cell phone on me. Try to call before things start exploding. Maybe this time it'll be different. Maybe I'll work everything out through reason, diplomacy, dialogue, and mutual cooperation. Thomas eyed me. I tried to look wounded. It could happen.

I grunted. It's something I picked up over a fifteen-year career in law enforcement. Men have managed to create a complex and utterly impenetrable secret language consisting of monosyllabic sounds and partial words—and they are apparently too thick to realize it exists. Maybe they really are from Mars. I'd been able to learn a few Martian phrases over time, and one of the useful ones was the grunt that meant I acknowledge that I've heard what you said; please continue.

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.