Quotes from Jim Butcher

stupid is way more dangerous than actual evil, if only because there's so much more of it around.

Professional Wizard Incinerates Amateur Vampire. News at ten.

Because Nicodemus is a murderous murdering murderer," I said.

Some things just aren't meant to go together. Thinks like oil and Water. Orange juice and toothpaste. Wizards and television. ... Maybe some things aren't meant to go together. Things like oil and water. Orange juice and toothpaste. Me and Susan.

The last thing I had expected to use that cleaning spell for when I had laboriously been forced to learn it was a tide of poisonous scorpion monsters, but any port in a storm.

He had to give humans credit where it was due - they did seem to have a knack for building interesting places for cats to explore.

The Queen smiled with the tiniest twitch of a single corner of her mouth. Why should I do that? Because I'm coming, Octavian's image said, very quietly, for you. The Queen stood as unmoving as stone. When I'm finished, Octavian promised, nothing will be left of your kind but stories. I will burn your homes. I will bury your warriors. His voice grew even softer. I will blacken your sky with crows.

I work in grand halls and bedchambers with wine and perfume. Not in dark alleyways with cloaks and knives. I don't like knives. I don't even own a knife. And my cloaks are far too expensive to risk bloodying.

Granted, my perspective is different from that of nonwizards, but marching out into the woods, looking for a very large and very powerful creature by blasting out what you're pretty sure are territorial challenges to fight (or else mating calls) seems … somewhat unwise.

Magic is a lot like language: it's all about stringing things together, linking one thing with another, one idea with another.

He is a cat, Miss Lancaster. Asking him such questions is an exercise in futility.

He died in his sleep one night. An aneurysm, the doctors said. I found him, cold, smiling. Maybe he'd been dreaming of Mother when he went. And as I looked at him, I suddenly felt, for the very first time in my life, utterly, entirely alone. That something was gone that would never return, that a little hole had been hollowed out inside of me that wasn't ever going to be filled again.

Honestly. He sometimes felt that humans simply had to be deliberately obtuse. What was so difficult about understanding civilized and excellently enunciated speech?

We wizards are terrific at brooding.

Everything's mine, Francis," she replied in a merry tone. "The only question is whether or not it knows it is yet.

MY NAME IS Mouse and I am a Good Dog. Everyone says so.

Dead before the sun rises, I said. Stars, Bob, why don't you just go over the melodramatic edge and tell me that I'm going to be sleeping with the fishes?

Same result, only I'd be steam-cooked instead of roasted.

I slip into the archaic at dramatically appropriate moments. So sue me.

What had changed things? What had made the difference? She had. All by herself.

Light shines brightest in the deepest dark!

Mab narrowed her eyes, and a little smile graced her lips. "Impudent," she said. "It's sweet on you.

You can describe it to them as much as you want. You can write books about what you felt, what you experienced. You can compose poems and songs about what it was like. But until they've seen it for themselves, they can't really know what it is you're talking about. A few people will clearly see the effect it had on you, will understand that much, at least. But they won't know.

Harry," Bob said. "Stars and skies, you're all right!" He hesitated for a second, and then said, "And looking grim. Even dressed in boxers with yellow duckies on them." I glanced down, and did my best to picture a vampire wearing boxers with yellow duckies. Or a wizard wearing yellow duckies, for that matter.