Jim Butcher

"Harry Dresden: Pain is a part of life. Sometimes it's a big part, and sometimes it isn't, but either way, it's part of the big puzzle, the deep music, the great game. 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."

"Marcone: In my judgment, my buildings are less likely to burn to the ground during one of your visits if you are disoriented from being treated like a sultan."

"Harry Dresden: You rush a miracle worker, you get lousy miracles!"

"Harry Dresden: That's Doctor Smart-ass. I didn't spend eight years in insult college to be called Mister."

"Harry Dresden: I can't believe I'm about to say this. So think real careful about where this is coming from: Have you people ever considered talking when you've got a problem?"

"Harry Dresden: You’re in America now. 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. Anastasia Luccio: Did you bring a sandwich? Harry Dresden: What do I look like, Kissinger?"

"Harry Dresden: The U.S. isn’t a perfect place, but it’s better than most people have managed to come up with. And all my stuff is there."

"Harry Dresden: 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 the darkness itself was enough to make us cry out in fear. Get a good ways out from civilization-say, miles and miles away on a lightless lake-and the darkness is there, waiting. Twilight means more than just time to call the children in from playing outside. Fading light means more than just the end of another day. Night is when terrible things emerge from their sleep and seek soft flesh and hot blood. Night is when unseen beings with no regard for what our people have built and no place in what we have deemed the natural order look in at our world from outside, and think dark and alien thoughts. And sometimes, just sometimes, they do things."

"Harry Dresden: Even a broken clock gets it right occasionally."

"Harry Dresden: This is Waldo Butters, and his geek penis is longer and harder than all of ours put together."

"Listens-To-Wind "Injun Joe": Not gonna bind ya or break ya, old spirit. Just gonna kick your ass up between your ears."

"Listens-To-Wind "Injun Joe": There is world that should be, and the world that is. We live in one. Ebenezer: And must create the other, if it is ever to be."

"Harry Dresden: You don't explain to the janitorial staff how your company is a part of a sinister organization with goals of global infiltration and control. You just tell them to clean the floor."

"Molly Carpenter: Wrote the Laws of Magic, founded the White Council, was custodian of one of the Swords and established a stronghold for the Council, too. He must have been something else. Harry Dresden: He must have been a real bastard. Guys who get their name splashed all over history and folklore don't tend to be Boy Scout troop leaders. Molly Carpenter: You're such a cynic. Harry Dresden: I think cynics are playful and cute."

"Harry Dresden: Hers was a beauty so pure that it was nearly painful to behold--Athena heading out on a Friday night."

"Harry Dresden: Susan smiled at me, giving Molly the Female Once-Over--a process by which one woman creates a detailed profile of another woman based upon about a million subtle details of clothing, jewelry, makeup, and body type, and then decides how much of a social threat she might be. Men have a parallel process, but it's binary: Does he have beer? If yes, will he share with me?"

"Harry Dresden: The freaking Council never does anything quickly, and I had a bad feeling that tempus was fugiting furiously."

"Harry Dresden: Pretty sure that Roman Catholic priests don't have peeps. Too trendy and ephemeral. Like automobiles. And the printing press."

"Susan Rodriguez: Harry, have you ever heard of the paperless office? Harry Dresden: Yeah. It's like Bigfoot. Someone says he knows someone who saw him, but you don't ever actually see him yourself."

"Warden Chandler: PS--Why, yes, I can in fact capitalize any words I desire. The language is English. I am English. Therefore mine is the opinion which matters, colonial heathen."

"Harry Dresden: As a whole, people suck, but a person can be extraordinary."

"Harry Dresden: 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."

"Queen Mab: For love men will mutilate themselves and murder rivals. For love will even a peaceful man go to war. For Love, man will destroy himself, and do so willingly."

"Harry Dresden: Paranoia is a survival trait when you run in my circles. It gives you something to do in your spare time, coming up with solutions to ridiculous problems that aren't ever going to happen. Except when one of them does, at which point you feel way too vindicated."

"Sanya, Knight of the Cross: There is, I think, humor here which does not translate well from English into sanity."

"Sanya, Knight of the Cross: Laugh whenever you can. Keeps you from killing yourself when things are bad. That and vodka."

"Harry Dresden: Boobs are near the center of the universe, until you turn twenty-five or so. Which is also when young men’s auto insurance rates go down. This is not a coincidence."

"Harry Dresden: Death is only frightening from the near side."

"Harry Dresden: Discussing a problem with yourself is almost never a good way to secure a divergent viewpoint."

"Thomas Raith: Harry's a wizard. A genuine, honest-to-good-ness wizard. He's Gandalf on crack and an IV of Red Bull, with a big leather coat and a .44 revolver in his pocket. He'll spit in the eye of gods and demons alike if he thinks it needs to be done, and to hell with the consequences-and yet somehow my little brother manages to remain a decent human being."

"The next time you interfere with me, more than smoke will interfere with you."

"Spelunking is dangerous enough without adding in anything that could be described with the word "ravening"."

"I'd never seen anyone go truly, old-school berserkergang, but that scream...It was like hearing an echo rolling down through the centuries from an ancient world, a more savage world, now lost to the mists of time. And suddenly I had no trouble at all believing her age."

"Bridges are a troll's specialty. Whether because of some magic or just because of aptitude, you never get across the bridge without facing the troll. That's life, I guess."

"Open eyes are of little use when the mind behind them is closed."

"Life, Tavi reflected, seldom makes a gift of what one expects or plans for."