Quotes from Jim Butcher

It is foolish for most to attempt to chain a tigress," Mab said. Her wide eyes swiveled to me. "Yet chains can be forged—and tigresses can be caged.

Pain does two things: It teaches you, tells you that you're alive. Then it passes away and leaves you changed. It leaves you wiser, sometimes. Sometimes it leaves you stronger. Either way, pain leaves its mark, and everything important that will ever happen to you in life is going to involve it in one degree or another.

Sometimes you get what's coming around. And sometimes, you are what's coming around.

They say we wizards are subtle. But believe you me, we've got nothing, nothing at all, on women.

Destiny is a . . . stone-cold bitch.

Home, like love, hate, war, and peace, is one of those words that is so important that it doesn't need more than one syllable. Home is part of the fabric of who humans are. Doesn't matter if you're a vampire or a wizard or a secretary or a schoolteacher; you have to have a home, even if only in principle—there has to be a zero point from which you can make comparisons to everything else. Home tends to be it.

She wasn't even trying to keep things subtle.

Granted, the battle harness and the P90 she carried (illegally, if that mattered at this point) made her a little lumpier and pointier than the dictates of romance typically mandated for a love interest, but all things considered, I didn't mind.

I'm at the Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg.

The fears of an old woman in a society that does not love or revere the wisdom of age as it once did.

No matter how severe Vadderung's people might be, they're always cheered by the chance to give you a hard time.

It's an incredibly complex system of interweaving energy that influences good old Mother Earth around us, but it all boils down to a fairly simple concept: Shit happens.

You know when you hear stories about people freezing when a tiger roars? That's infrasound, having an effect on the parasympathetic nervous system.

I'm not sure it's possible to manipulate someone with candor and truth. I think you call that enlightenment.

Isana had never understood men who made it a point to put trophies of their hunts on the walls. Gaius's study, its walls lines with the carcasses of books he had torn open and devoured, reminded her of nothing so much as old Aldo's hunting lodge, back in the Calderon Valley, and she thought it only marginally less boastful.

And believe me, next to sex, washing and styling a woman's hair is about as intimate as you can get with her.

The world might be vicious and treacherous and deadly, but it couldn't kill laughter. Laughter, like love, has power to survive the worst things life has to offer. And to do it with style. It got me moving.

I will make Maggie safe. If the world burns because of that, then so be it. Me and the kid will roast some marshmallows.

At five feet and small change, a hundred and not much, she didn't exactly look like a tough Chicago cop who could face down monsters and maniacs with equal nerve. Chicks like that aren't supposed to be blond or have a cute nose.

Okay," Kincaid said. "Anyone have any questions?" "Why do they sell hot dogs in packages of ten but hot dog buns in packages of eight?" I said. Everyone glared at me.

Arturo's face clouded with annoyance. "Fine. Production assistant." Something in his pants made a chirping sound, and he drew a cell phone from his pocket. He held up a hand to me and stepped over to the other side of the room, speaking in low tones

bullies either. He'd be glad to have

she was something much more dangerous than that. She was disciplined, rigidly self-restrained, and she didn't give way to either the demonic parasite that made her a monster or anyone else who would try to force her into doing something she didn't want to do.

Words have a power every bit as terrible and beautiful as magic, and they don't need a special effects budget to do it, either.