Jim Butcher famous quotes

When everything goes to hell, the people who stand by you without flinching - they are your family.
-- Jim Butcher

#Family #People #Hell

Ah. Medieval-style ransom.” Toot looked confused. “He did run some, but I stopped him, my lord. Like, just now. In front of you. Right over there.” There were several conspicuous sounds behind me, the loudest from my apprentice, and I turned to eye everyone else. They were all either covering smiles or holding them back— poorly. “Hey, peanut gallery,” I said. “This isn’t as easy as I’m making it look.” “You’re doing fine,” Karrin said, her eyes twinkling. I sighed. “Come on, Toot,” I said, and walked over to Hook.
-- Jim Butcher

#Running #Confused #Eye

There's power in the night. There's terror in the darkness. Despite all our accumulated history, learning, and experience, we remember. We remember times when we were too small to reach the light switch on the wall, and when darkness itself was enough to make us cry out in fear....
-- Jim Butcher

#Wall #Night #Light

The building was on fire, and it wasn’t my fault.
-- Jim Butcher

#Fire #Faults #Building

He's Black Council," I said. "Or maybe stupid," Ebenezar countered. I thought about it. "Not sure which is scarier." Ebenezar blinked at me, then snorted. "Stupid, Hoss. Every time. Only so many blackhearted villains in the world, and they only get uppity on occasion. Stupid's everywhere, every day.
-- Jim Butcher

#Stupid #Black #World

Rest. Heal. Sleep. I shall most likely kill you on the morrow.” “You? A Princess Bride quote?” I croaked. “What is that?” she asked.
-- Jim Butcher

#Princess #Sleep #Morrow

What is the point of having free will if one cannot occasionally spit in the eye of destiny?
-- Jim Butcher

#Eye #Destiny #Choices

He's Gandalf on crack and an IV of Red Bull, with a big leather coat and a .44 revolver in his pocket.
-- Jim Butcher

#Coats #Red #Pockets

The movie of my life must be really low budget.
-- Jim Butcher

#Lows

HARRY DRESDEN—WIZARD Lost Items Found. Paranormal Investigations. Consulting. Advice. Reasonable Rates. No Love Potions, Endless Purses, Parties, or Other Entertainment
-- Jim Butcher

#Party #Advice #Wizards

I choose my battles, Dresden. Not you." She looked up at me calmly. "Let me put this in terms that will get through your skull: My friend is going to save a child from monsters. I'm going with him. That's what friends do, Harry.
-- Jim Butcher

#Children #Skulls #Battle

Oh, what would you like on your vegetarian pizza?" "Dead pigs and cows," I said. She glanced up at me and wrinkled her nose. "They're vegetarians," I said defensively.
-- Jim Butcher

#Pigs #Noses #Cows

If your opponent has you by fifty pounds, winning a fight against him is a dubious proposition, at best. If your opponent has you by eight thousand and fifty pounds, you’ve left the realm of combat and enrolled yourself in Road-kill 101. Or possibly in a Tom and Jerry cartoon.
-- Jim Butcher

#Fighting #Winning #Eight

But there were some things I believed in. Some things I had faith in. And faith isn't about perfect attendance to services, or how much money you put on the little plate. It isn't about going skyclad to the Holy Rites, or meditating each day upon the divine. Faith is about what you do. It's about aspiring to be better and nobler and kinder than you are. It's about making sacrifices for the good of others - even when there's not going to be anyone telling you what a hero you are.
-- Jim Butcher

#Hero #Sacrifice #Perfect

Heroism doesn't pay very well. I try to be cold-blooded and money-oriented, but I keep screwing it up.
-- Jim Butcher

#Trying #Heroism #Pay

Sleep is God. Go worship.
-- Jim Butcher

#Sleep #Worship

There's always, always a choice. My options might really, truly suck, but that doesn't mean there isn't a choice.
-- Jim Butcher

#Mean #Choices #Might

Sticks and stones may break your bones, but Chinese throwing stars get you a dozen stitches.
-- Jim Butcher

#Stars #Chinese #Stones

The married thing. Sometimes I look at it and feel like someone from a Dickens novel, standing outside in the cold and staring in at Christmas dinner. Relationships hadn't ever really worked for me. I think it's had something to do with all the demons, ghosts, and human sacrifice.
-- Jim Butcher

#Sacrifice #Thinking #Dinner

You don't take your cat with you to go bird shopping. Not because the cat isn't polite, but because he's a cat.
-- Jim Butcher

#Cat #Shopping #Bird

Life is a journey. Time is a river. The door is ajar
-- Jim Butcher

#Life #Journey #Doors

Sticks and stones and small caliber bullets may break my bones... Words will never, et cetera.
-- Jim Butcher

#Sticks #May #Stones

Nay, but prithee, with sprinkles 'pon it instead," I said solemnly, "and frosting of white.
-- Jim Butcher

#White #Sprinkles #Said

Those who deal in magic learn to see the world in a slightly differnt light than everybody else.you gain a perspective you had considered before. A way of thinking that would never have occurred to you with out exposure to the things a wizard sees and hears.When you look in to some ones eyes you see them in that other light and for just a second they see you in the same way.
-- Jim Butcher

#Eye #Thinking #Light

Mister Dresden," he said. "And Miss Rodriguez, I believe. I didn't realize you were an art collector." "I am the foremost collector of velvet Elvii in the city of Chicago," I said at once. "Elvii?" Marcone inquired. "The plural could be Elvises, I guess," I said. "But if I say that too often, I start muttering to myself and calling things 'my precious,' so I usually go with the Latin plural.
-- Jim Butcher

#Art #Latin #Believe

My hair had grown out long and shaggy—not in that sexy-young-rock-star kind of way but in that time-to-take-Rover-to-the-groomer kind of way.
-- Jim Butcher

#Sexy #Stars #Hair

I'd made the vampire cry. Great. I felt like a real superhero. Harry Dresden, breaker of monsters' hearts.
-- Jim Butcher

#Women #Real #Heart

Most of the bad guys in the real world don't know that they are bad guys. You don't get a flashing warning sign that you're about to damn yourself. It sneaks up on you when you aren't looking.
-- Jim Butcher

#Real #Guy #Warning

And I knew that there was some dark corner of me that would enjoy using magic for killing—and then long for more. That was black magic, and it was easy to use. Easy and fun. Like Legos
-- Jim Butcher

#Fun #Dark #Long

No rest for the wicked, Bob, and that means that we can't slack off either, or they'll outwork us.
-- Jim Butcher

#Mean #Wicked #Bob

A pure heart and mind only takes you so far - sooner or later the hormones have their say, too.
-- Jim Butcher

#Heart #Mind #Hormones

Faith is about what you do. It's about aspiring to be better and nobler and kinder than you are. It's about making sacrifices for the good of others-- even when there's not going to be anyone telling you what a hero you are.
-- Jim Butcher

#Hero #Sacrifice #Making Sacrifices

Fear is bred from ignorance. So knowledge is a weapon against it, and reason is the tool of knowledge.
-- Jim Butcher

#Ignorance #Tools #Weapons

You're in America now," I said. "Our idea of diplomacy is showing up with a gun in one hand and a sandwich in the other and asking which you'd prefer.
-- Jim Butcher

#Gun #America #Hands

Karrin Murphy led the charge, and Sanya and I tried to keep up. She went through that sea of foes like a little speedboat, her enemies spun and tossed and turned and disoriented in her wake. Sanya and I hacked our way through stunned foes, pushing and chopping with unsophisticated brutality-and that big Russian lunatic just kept laughing the whole time.
-- Jim Butcher

#Sea #Laughing #Enemy

Honest. It's almost always best to go with honest. It means you never have to worry about getting your story straight.
-- Jim Butcher

#Mean #Worry #Stories

Yeah, but I forgot to take my George Orwell-shaped multivitamins along with my breakfast bowl of Big Brother Os this morning.
-- Jim Butcher

#Brother #Morning #Breakfast

A man's magic demonstrates what sort of person he is, what is held most deeply inside of him. There is no truer gauge of a man's character than the way in which he employs his strength, his power. I was not a murderer. I was not like Victor Sells. I was Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden. I was a wizard. Wizards control their power. They don't let it control them. And wizards don't use magic to kill people. They use it to discover, to protect, to mend, to help. Not to destroy.
-- Jim Butcher

#Character #Men #People

Something like this will test you like nothing else," Mac said. "You're going to find out who you are, Harry. You're going to find out which principles you'll stand by to your death--and which lines you'll cross." He took my empty glass away and said, "You're heading into the badlands. It'll be easy to get lost.
-- Jim Butcher

#Glasses #Lines #Tests

Life is too short, Harry. And there's nowhere near enough joy in it. If you find it, grab it. Before it's gone.
-- Jim Butcher

#Life Is Too Short #Joy #Gone

I felt my face stretch in a victorious smile. The potion had worked. I was inside. I had to suppress an urge to break into a soft shoe routine. Sometimes being able to use magic was so cool.
-- Jim Butcher

#Shoes #Magic #Able

I'm pretty sure lurking in a dark alley to mug me with your apology isn't the usual way to go about saying you're sorry. But I didn't read that Mars-Venus book, so who knows.
-- Jim Butcher

#Sorry #Book #Dark

Life is full of toil, sacrifice, and pain, and from the time we stop growing, we know that we've begun dying. We watch helplessly as year by year, our bodies age and fail, while our survival instincts compel us to keep on going-which means living with the terrifying knowledge that ultimately death is inescapable.
-- Jim Butcher

#Pain #Mean #Sacrifice

The cold rain came down in buckets. I was shaking, shivering, and naked, and more soap was getting into my eyes. But hey. At least I was clean.
-- Jim Butcher

#Rain #Eye #Buckets

Laughter, like love, has power to survive the worst things life has to offer. And to do it with style.
-- Jim Butcher

#Laughter #Style #Worst

The impossible we do immediately. The unimaginable takes a little while.
-- Jim Butcher

#Littles #Impossible

If you make some comment even obliquely alluding to menstruation or menopause and its effect on my judgment," Murphy interrupted, "I will break your arm in eleven places.
-- Jim Butcher

#Arms #Judgment #Break

Have you ever felt despair? Absolute hopelessness? Have you ever stood in the darkness and known, deep in your heart, in your spirit, that it was never, ever going to get better? That something had been lost, forever, and that it wasn't coming back?
-- Jim Butcher

#Heart #Forever #Darkness

There's more magic in a baby's first giggle than in any firestorm a wizard can conjure up, and don't let anyone tell you any different.
-- Jim Butcher

#Baby #Magic #Different

The human mind isn't a terribly logical or consistent place. Most people, given the choice to face a hideous or terrifying truth or to conveniently avoid it, choose the convenience and peace of normality. That doesn't make them strong or weak people, or good or bad people. It just makes them people.
-- Jim Butcher

#Strong #People #Choices

You know how confusing the whole good-evil concept is for me.
-- Jim Butcher

#Evil #Confusing #Good Evil

I've always felt that the best whips and chains are in the mind. With a little creativity, the physical ones are hardly necessary.
-- Jim Butcher

#Creativity #Mind #Littles

Now I feel like James Bond. Suave and intelligent, breaking all the codes while looking fabulous.
-- Jim Butcher

#Intelligent #Suave #Fabulous

Evil isn’t the real threat to the world. Stupid is just as destructive as Evil, maybe more so, and it’s a hell of a lot more common. What we really need is a crusade against Stupid. That might actually make a difference.
-- Jim Butcher

#Real #Stupid #Differences

In the name of the Pizza Lord. Charge!
-- Jim Butcher

#Motivational #Names #Lord

She studied my face for a long minute. "Are you going to help my mom?" It was a simple question. But how do you tell a child that things just aren't that simple, that some questions don't have simple answers--or any answer at all?
-- Jim Butcher

#Mom #Children #Simple

I ask people impertinent questions. Hopefully turning up pertinent answers.
-- Jim Butcher

#People #Answers #Pertinent

Fire isn't always an element of destruction. Classical alchemical doctrine teaches that it also has dominion over another province: change.
-- Jim Butcher

#Fire #Doctrine #Elements

Courage is about learning how to function despite the fear, to put aside your instincts to run or give in completely to the anger born from fear. Courage is about using your brain and your heart when every cell of your body is screaming at your to fight or flee - and then following through on what you believe is the right thing to do.
-- Jim Butcher

#Running #Courage #Fear

Because nothing says flattery like a gun to the head.
-- Jim Butcher

#Gun #Flattery

You don't go walking into the proverbial lion's den lightly. You start with a good breakfast.
-- Jim Butcher

#Motivational #Breakfast #Lions

Hope is a force of nature. Don't let anyone tell you different.
-- Jim Butcher

#Different #Force #Forces Of Nature

If you go to your death rather than do everything you might to prevent what is happening, you are merely committing suicide and trying to make yourself feel better about it. That is the act of a coward. It is beneath contempt.
-- Jim Butcher

#Suicide #Feel Better #Trying

Passion has overthrown tyrants and freed prisoners and slaves. Passion has brought justice where there was savagery. Passion has created freedom where there was nothing but fear. Passion has helped souls rise from the ashes of their horrible lives and build something better, stronger, more beautiful.
-- Jim Butcher

#Beautiful #Passion #Tyrants

Fear is a part of life. It's a warning mechanism. That's all. It tells you when there's danger around. Its job is to help you survive. Not cripple you into being unable to do it.
-- Jim Butcher

#Jobs #Fear #Positive Thinking

Smiling always seems to annoy people more than actually insulting them. Or maybe I just have an annoying smile.
-- Jim Butcher

#People #Insulting #Annoying

Tavi grinned. "Are you with me?" "The plan is insane," Ehren said. "YOU are insane." He looked around the inside of the tent. "I'll need some pants.
-- Jim Butcher

#Insane #Needs #Pants

There're things we keep hidden from one another. Things we hide from ourselves. Things that are kept hidden from us. And things no one knows. You always learn the damnedest things at the worst possible times.
-- Jim Butcher

#Worst

The fire of my tribulations had not simply been pain to be endured. It had been an agent of transformation. After all that I'd been through, I'd changed. Not for the worse, I was pretty sure--at least not yet. But only a moron or a freaking lunatic could have faced the things I had and remained unfazed by them.
-- Jim Butcher

#Pain #Fire #Agents

Star Trek?” I asked her. “Really?” “What?” she demanded, bending unnaturally black eyebrows together. “There are two kinds of people in the universe, Molly,” I said. “Star Trek fans and Star Wars fans. This is shocking.” She sniffed. “This is the post-nerd-closet world, Harry. It’s okay to like both.” “Blasphemy and lies,” I said.
-- Jim Butcher

#Stars #Lying #War

Likest thou jelly within thy doughnut?
-- Jim Butcher

#Jelly #Doughnut

I had a vague memory of being that ridiculous at one time. Let he who hath never worn parachute pants cast the first stone.
-- Jim Butcher

#Memories #Firsts #Stones

You can't plan for everything or you never get started in the first place.
-- Jim Butcher

#Firsts #Plans

Knowledge is the ultimate weapon. It always has been.
-- Jim Butcher

#Weapons #Ultimate

Regardless of what I think about Islam or Wicca or any other religion, the fact is that it's a group of people. Every faith has its ceremonies. And since it's made up of people, every faith also has its assholes.
-- Jim Butcher

#Thinking #People #Islam

Many things are not as they seem: The worst things in life never are.
-- Jim Butcher

#Harry Dresden #Worst #Dresden

Laughter is good for you. Nine out of ten stand-up comedians recommend laughter in the face of intense stupidity.
-- Jim Butcher

#Laughter #Stupidity #Comedian

Time after time, history demonstrates that when people don't want to believe something, they have enormous skills of ignoring it altogether.
-- Jim Butcher

#Believe #Skills #People

I don't have anything against God. Far from it. But I don't understand Him. And I don't trust a lot of the people that go around claiming that they're working in His best interests. Faeries and vampires and whatnot -- those I can fathom. Even demons. Sometimes, even the Fallen. I can understand why they do what they do. But I don't understand God. I don't understand how he could see the way people treat one another, and not chalk up the whole human race as a bad idea
-- Jim Butcher

#Ideas #Race #People

Everything was perfectly healthy and normal here in Denial Land.
-- Jim Butcher

#Land #Healthy #Denial

I don't know about your true form, but the weight of your ego sure is pushing the crust of the earth toward the breaking point.
-- Jim Butcher

#Point Break #Ego #Pushing

Laugh whenever you can. Keeps you from killing yourself when things are bad. That and vodka.
-- Jim Butcher

#Laughter #Laughing #Sanity

There are bad things in the world. There's no getting away from that. But that doesn't mean nothing can be done about them. You can't abandon life just because it's scary, and just because sometimes you get hurt.
-- Jim Butcher

#Hurt #Mean #Scary

We have now left Reason and Sanity Junction. Next stop, Looneyville.
-- Jim Butcher

#Next #Sanity #Reason

Magic comes from what is inside you. It is a part of you. You can't weave together a spell that you don't beleive in.
-- Jim Butcher

#Magic #Together

Anger is just anger. It isn't good. It isn't bad. It just is. What you do with it is what matters. It's like anything else. You can use it to build or to destroy. You just have to make the choice.
-- Jim Butcher

#Anger #What Matters #Choices

Survival was not enough. One had to live.
-- Jim Butcher

#Survival #Enough

Life would be unbearably dull if we had answers to all our questions.
-- Jim Butcher

#Would Be #Answers #Dull

Do you want your blood to stay where it is sochar-lar?" Tavi lifted both eyebrows at the unfamiliar word, and glanced at Varg. "Monkey," Varg supplied, in Aleran. "And male-child." "He called me monkey boy?" Tavi asked.
-- Jim Butcher

#Children #Boys #Blood

My head was throbbing, and my hands were shaking, but I went down the ladder to my workroom - and started figuring out how to rip someone's heart out of his chest from fifty miles away. Who says I never do anything fun on a Friday night?
-- Jim Butcher

#Friday #Fun #Rip

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.
-- Jim Butcher

#Lying #Believe #Past

There’s nothing that makes you more insane than family. Or more happy. Or more exasperated. Or more . . . secure.
-- Jim Butcher

#Family #Home #Insane

Whenever you've got a choice, do good, kiddo. It isn't always fun or easy, but in the long run it makes your life better.
-- Jim Butcher

#Running #Fun #Long

There are old swordsmen and bold swordsmen. But few old, bold swordsmen.
-- Jim Butcher

Kids. You gotta love them. I adore children. A little salt, a squeeze of lemon--perfect.
-- Jim Butcher

#Children #Kids #Perfect

Pain is a byproduct of life. That’s the truth. Life sometimes sucks. That’s true for everyone. But if you don’t face the pain and the suck, you don’t ever get the other things either. Laughter. Joy. Love. Pain passes, but those things are worth fighting for. Worth dying for.
-- Jim Butcher

#Pain #Laughter #Fighting

Alone. It's one of those small words that means entirely too much. Like fear. Or trust.
-- Jim Butcher

#Mean #Too Much

Even in winter, the cold isn't always bitter, and not every day is cruel.
-- Jim Butcher

#Winter #Bitter #Cold

One can have only as much preparation as he has foresight.
-- Jim Butcher

#Preparation #Foresight

People love dogs. You can never go wrong adding a dog to the story.
-- Jim Butcher

#Dog #People #Stories