Quotes from Jim Butcher

Mortals prattle on about lonely impulses of delight and the gift of knowledge, and think that teaching is a trade like metalsmithing or healing or telling lies on television. It is not. It is the dissemination of power unto a new generation and nothing less. For her, as for you, lessons demand real risk in order to attain their true rewards.

I reflected that odds were that not a lot of clandestine meetings involving mystical assassination, theft of arcane power, and the balance of power in the realms of the supernatural had taken place in a Wal-Mart Super Center.

Hell's bells," I muttered. "Harry, you idiot, when will you learn not to victory gloat?

Lord," Michael said. "We walk into darkness now. Our enemies will surround us. Please help to make us strong enough to do what needs to be done. Amen.

Beards grow out so fast that if you shave every day, there isn't much of a window for anyone to use them against you—and shaved stubble is too diffuse to make a decent channel anyway.

Books were expensive, as well. But she'd read enough of them to know that they were only as valuable as the contents of their writers' minds—and to her it seemed that a great many writers, had they been merchants, would have precious little inventory.

Describing something helps to define it, to give it limits, to set guardrails of understanding around it.

That woman, Grimm said quietly, drives me quite insane. Kettle grunted. Why'd you marry her, then?

It isn't good to hold on too hard to the past. You can't spend your whole life looking back. Not even when you can't see what lies ahead. All you can do is keep on keeping on, and try to believe that tomorrow will be what it should be—even if it isn't what you expected.

the end of the day, people have to be who they are. If you try to take that from them, you diminish them. You reduce them to children, unable to make decisions for themselves. There's no way to poison your relationship with someone else faster.

You are a rare kind of crazy, man.

Magic comes from life, from the energy of our world and from people, from their emotions and their will. That's what I had always been taught.

I parked somewhere where I would probably get a ticket. I planned to ignore it. Anarchists have a much easier time finding parking spots.

You have to realize when you've reached the limits of what you can choose to do to change the situation.

seeing a wizard cut loose can do that to

What's the point in answering, Warden? It's obvious that you've already tried and convicted me. If I tell you I am involved, you will believe me guilty. If I tell you I am not involved, you will believe me guilty. The only thing I can do is deny you your precious moral justification. She lifted a hand to her lips and pantomimed turning a key and throwing it away.

When a single cat let loose a war cry, it was an unsettling sound. When two cats suddenly wailed at each other in a similar fashion, it was downright unnerving. When hundreds of them caterwauled at the same time, in a single voice, the sound alone was enough to make one feel as if the skin had been peeled from one's muscle and bone, to call up horrors inherited from ancestors long since dead and forgotten, raw terror before a deadly predator.

I had time to think, though I wasn't sure I wanted to.

You almost got yourself killed, she said, but her voice had softened a few shades. I noticed that she hadn't moved her hand from the other side of Billy's chest and he was looking up at her with an expectant expression. She fell silent, and they stared at one another for a minute. I saw her swallow. Please help me. Young werewolves in love.

the beginning of wisdom is in realizing that one knows nothing, then the beginning of understanding is in realizing that all things exist in accord with a single truth: Large things are made of smaller things. Drops

Solution: Winchester.

I do magic, in one form or another, and that's pretty much it. I really need to get a life, one of these days.

duty was a cold and barren shelter for a wounded spirit.

It's irrational and childish for me to be upset, and I don't care.