Jim Butcher Quotes

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

“Harry Dresden: Took cover. In the action business, when you don't want to say you ran like a mouse, you call it 'taking cover.”

“It came charging toward me, several hundred pounds of angry-looking monster, and I did the only thing any reasonable wizard could have done.
I turned around and ran like hell.”

“Harry," Bob drawled, his eye lights flickering smugly, "what you know about women, I could juggle.”

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

“Punctuality is for people with nothing better to do”

“Harry Dresden: I don't care about whose DNA has recombined with whose. When everything goes to hell, the people who stand by you without flinching - they are your family.”

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

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

“I let out a battle cry. Sure, a lot of people might have mistaken it for a sudden yelp of unmanly fear, but trust me. It was a battle cry.”

“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.”

“I was seducing shepherdesses when you weren't a twinkle in your great-grandcestor's eyes. I think I know what I'm doing.”

“I am blind and limited. I would be a fool think myself wise. And so, not knowing what the universe means, I can only try to be responsible with the knowledge, the strength, and the time given to me. I must be true to my heart.”

“Wait. You work for me?"
"I prefer to think of it as managing your incompetence.”

“Michael smiled at me a little. “You’re a good man, Harry. But you’re making the same mistake Nicodemus always has—and the same one Karrin did.” “What mistake?” “You all think the critical word in the phrase ‘Sword of Faith’ is ‘sword.”

“Caring about someone isn't complicated. It isn't easy. But it isn't complicated, either. Kinda like lifting the engine block out of a car.”

“We're always disappointed when we find out someone else has human limits, the same as we do. It's stupid for us to feel that way, and we really ought to know better, but that doesn't seem to slow us down.”

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

“I had to smile at the man. I mean, you have to smile at idiots and children.”

“Harry Dresden: The building was on fire, and it wasn't my fault.”

“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.”

“What is the point of having free will if one cannot occasionally spit in the eye of destiny?”

“If I need you I'll give you a signal.'
'What signal?'
'I'll imitate the scream of a terrified little girl”

“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?”

“I died. I died and someone made a clerical error and I am in Heaven.”

“Ack!" I said.

Fearless master of the witty dialogue, that's me.”

“Me and polite have never been on close terms.”

“There are things you can't walk away from. Not if you want to live with yourself afterward.”

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

“Wizards and computers get along about as well as flamethrowers and libraries.”

“If you can't stop the bad thoughts from coming to visit, at least you can make fun of them while they're hanging around.”

“I know it's not thematically in tune with my new job and all, but I find it effective. Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day," I say. "But set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life. Tao of Pratchett. I live by it.”

“A technicality I'm prepared to hide wildly behind.”

“Nobody can be bad at everything. There’s no such thing as a perfect screwup.”

“There's a fine line between audacity and idiocy.”

“I've never lost a duel to the death. Not one.”

“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.”

“I sometimes give myself excellent advice. Occasionally, I even listen to it.”

“There are old swordsmen and bold swordsmen. But few old, bold swordsmen.”

“If I was on the road to Hell, at least I was going in style.”

“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.”

“Ha-ha! Ah-hahahaha! I am wizard; hear me roar!”

“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.”

“Body or mind, heart or soul, we're all human, and we're supposed to feel pain. You cut yourself off from it at your own risk.”

“Things are not always as bad as they seem. Sometimes, the darkness only makes it easier to see the light.”

“Harry Dresden: There was a sound of impact, a raspy, dry scream, and the vampire went down hard. It lay on the ground like a butterfly pinned to a card, arms and legs thrashing uselessly. Its chest and collarbone had been crushed. By an entire frozen turkey. A twenty-pounder. The plucked bird must have fallen from an airplane overhead, doubtlessly manipulated by the curse. By the time it got to the ground, the turkey had already reached its terminal velocity, and was still hard as a brick. The drumsticks poked up above the vampire's crushed chest, their ends wrapped in red tinfoil. The vampire gasped and writhed a little more. The timer popped out of the turkey. Everyone stopped to blink at that for a second. I mean, come on. Impaled by a guided frozen turkey missile. Even by the standards of the quasi-immortal creatures of the night, that ain't something you see twice. "For my next trick," I panted into the startled silence, "anvils."”

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

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

“Are you always a smartass?'

Nope. Sometimes I'm asleep.”

“Harry Dresden: Paranoid? Probably. But just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face.”

“Life is a journey. Time is a river. The door is ajar”

“We have now left Reason and Sanity Junction. Next stop, Looneyville.”

“Sleep is God. Go worship.”

“The human mind is not a terribly logical or consistent place.”

“You backbiting, poisonous, treacherous, deceitful, wicked, girl. If this works I'll buy you a pony.”

“Of course Evil's afoot. If it had switched to the metric system it'd be up to a meter by now.”

“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.”

“So. You get handed a holy sword by an archangel, told to go fight the forces of evil, and you somehow remain an atheist. Is that what you're saying?”

“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.”

“Malcolm Dresden: Son. Everyone dies alone. That's what it is. It's a door. It's one person wide. When you go through it, you do it alone." His fingers squeezed me tight. "But it doesn't mean you've got to be alone before you go through the door. And believe me, you aren't alone on the other side."”

“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.”

“Life would be unbearably dull if we had answers to all our questions.”

“But the only way never to do the wrong thing is never to do anything.”

“Thomas Raith: An errand is getting a tank of gas or picking up a carton of milk or something. It is not getting chased by flying purple pyromaniac gorillas hurling incendiary poo.”

“Harry Dresden: Maybe it wasn't anything I'd done. Maybe the monsters had gone on strike. Yeah right.”

“I still can't believe," Michael said, sotto voce, "that you came to the Vampires' Masquerade Ball dressed as a vampire.”