Quotes from Jim Butcher

You can't change what has already happened. But you choose what to do next. Which means that you only cross over to the dark side if you choose to do it.

It's tough to say no to peace, to the comfort of it. All through history, people have traded wealth, children, land, and lives to buy it. But peace can't be bought, can it, chief, prime minister? The only ones offering to sell it always want something more. They lie.

Hell's bells, Morty, I said. Next you'll be telling me that I didn't even meet his shade. That I deluded myself into deluding myself into deluding him into deluding me that I made the whole thing up.

Fear has a lot of flavors and textures. There's a sharp, silver fear that runs like lightning through your arms and legs, galvanizes you into action, power, motion. There's heavy, leaden fear that comes in ingots, piling up in your belly during the empty hours between midnight and morning, when everything is dark, every problem grows larger, and every wound and illness grows worse.

she bowed just low enough to draw the young man's [Daniel Carpenter] eyes to her décolletage. He flushed and looked away sternly. After a second. Tough to blame the kid. I've been a young man. Boobs are near the center of the universe.

You can tell a lot about a man from how he treats his dog

I had about as much chance to do that as I did of backpacking my car to the top of Mount Rushmore.

It gets kind of zen after awhile, life is a journey, time is a river, the door is ajar.

Thomas hooked a thumb at Butters. Check out Dr. Marcus Welby, MD, here. I'd have gone with Doogie Howser, maybe, I said. Split the difference at McCoy? Thomas asked? Perfect.

God isn't about making good things happen to you,or bad things happen to you. He's all about making choice - exercising the gift of free will.

Ascher eyed me. "You have a very negative attitude. Just relax and we'll get this done. Try not to look around so much. And for God's sake, smile." I smiled. "Maybe without clenching your jaw.

Lara [Raith] was gorgeous, brilliant, and sexier than a Swedish bikini team hiking up a mountain of money.

I snorted. "They still make you read Dickens in school? Great Expectations?" "Yeah." "You can stay at home and hide if you want—and wind up like Miss Havisham," I said. "Watching life through a window and obsessed with how things might have been." "Dear God," she said. "You've just made Dickens relevant to my life." "Weird, right?" I asked her, nodding.

A smile fought its way through her expression of pain for a moment, and she said, "Yeah, it really kind of was, wasn't it? Was that a Salamander?" "Pretty sure," I said. "They're so much bigger than in those Xanth books.

I was casting everything I had done, everything I believed, everything I had chosen—everything I was—against the will of an ancient being of darkness, terror, and malice, a fundamental power of the world. And the bonds and the will of Mother Winter could not constrain me.

I leaned against the wall, dazed, panting, and gasped, in my deepest and most gravelly voice, "No one can chain the Hulk!

Those who had never seen a tribe of cats at war, or at least playing war games, would look upon what came next as utter chaos.

In the void, there is no distinction of east and west. Gwen blinked slightly at that. I know all of those words, and yet when strung together like that I have no idea what they mean.

It's a shadelight, Grimm said quietly. Some of my men put one up whenever I lose a member of the crew. To light his shade's way back to his bunk, so he can rest. A bit heathen of them, I suppose, Benedict said. It's a tradition, Grimm said. Were traditions rational, they'd be procedures.

The demon trapped in the summoning circle screamed, slamming its crablike pincers against the unseen barrier, hurling its chitinous shoulders from side to side in an effort to escape the confinement. It couldn't. I kept my will on the circle, kept the demon from bursting free. Satisfied, Chauncy? I asked it. The demon straightened its hideous form and said, in a perfect Oxford accent, Quite. You understand, I must observe the formalities.

It would, Grimm thought, be a horrible surprise to find out, mid-dive, that your ship had suddenly lost the ability to stop diving.

What one deserves and what one experiences are seldom congruent.

I tried not to be too obviously interested, and fumbled my notebook and trusty pencil from my duster's pocket.

That's just a fiction," I said, "a little game of protocol." "Little games of protocol are how one shows respect, especially to those with whom one does not get along famously well. It can be tedious, but generally is less trouble than a duel would be.