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Jim Butcher Quotes
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Jim Butcher is an American author best known for his contemporary fantasy book series The Dresden Files. He is also the author of the Codex Alera series, and the Cinder Spires series.

✵ 26. October 1971
Jim Butcher photo
Jim Butcher: 383 quotes51 likes

Jim Butcher Quotes

“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 Captain's Fury

Source: Captain's Fury

“Revenge is like sex, Mister Dresden. It's best when it comes on slow, quiet, until it all seems inexorable.”

Jim Butcher book Grave Peril

Source: Grave Peril

“Any time I’m not shooting my mouth off to a clichéd, two-bit creature of the night like you, it’s because I’m up to something.”

Jim Butcher

Source: Many Bloody Returns

“This is what it look like when it WORKS?”

Jim Butcher book Cursor's Fury

Source: Cursor's Fury

“Just like credit card companies, or those student loan people. Now there's evil for you.”

Jim Butcher book Summer Knight

Source: Summer Knight

“You predicted quick victory. Now it’s going to get hopelessly complicated. Jesus, don’t you know any better than that by now?”

Jim Butcher Proven Guilty

Source: Proven Guilty

“Harry Dresden: The noise was deafening, and no one could have heard me anyway as I let out my own battle cry, which I figured was worth a shot. What the hell. "I don't believe in faeries!"”

Jim Butcher book Summer Knight

Source: The Dresden Files, Summer Knight (2002), Chapter 31

“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 book Changes

Source: The Dresden Files, Changes (2010), Chapter 26
Context: 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.

“Discretion is the better part of not getting exsanguinated.”

Jim Butcher book Blood Rites

Source: Blood Rites

“Gruff,” I said, “I find myself largely clueless about why mortal women do what they do. It will take a wiser man than me to understand what’s in a fae woman’s mind.”

Jim Butcher book Small Favor

Source: Small Favor

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

Jim Butcher Proven Guilty

Source: Proven Guilty

“Here had lived someone else who knew that the only thing waiting at home was a sense of loneliness.

Sometimes it is comforting.

Most often, it isn't.”

Jim Butcher book Storm Front

Source: Storm Front

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

Jim Butcher book White Night

Source: White Night

“As far as the Council is concerned, the U. S. Wardens are a bunch of mushrooms."
"Eh?"
"Kept in the dark and fed on bullshit.”

Jim Butcher Turn Coat

Source: Turn Coat

“If you can't manage courtesy, try silence.”

Jim Butcher book White Night

Source: White Night

“I put the ick in magic.”

Jim Butcher book Death Masks

Source: Death Masks

“Hush, Harry. Or you'll go to the special hell."

I blinked at that, confused. I'm not supposed to be the guy who doesn't get the reference joke, dammit.”

Jim Butcher book Cold Days

Source: Cold Days

“There aren't any magical words, really. Words just hold the magic.”

Jim Butcher book Grave Peril

Source: Grave Peril

“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 book Grave Peril

Source: Grave Peril

“Tiny, but fierce!”

Jim Butcher

“Jump into an open grave? What kind of idiot are you?" Butters replied. "I might as well put on a red shirt and volunteer for the away team. There's snow and ice and slippery mud down there. That's like asking for an ironically broken neck.”

Jim Butcher book Ghost Story

Source: Ghost Story

“Dammit, Dresden, if you want to know about me, wait for the autobiography like everyone else.”

Jim Butcher book Blood Rites

Source: Blood Rites

“You can be as sincere as hell and still be wrong.”

Jim Butcher book Small Favor

Source: Small Favor

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

Jim Butcher book Cold Days

Source: Cold Days

“Do you know my dog's name?
[…]
"It is from an ancient word, kerberos. It means 'spotted.'"

I blinked. "You're a genuine Greek god. You're the Lord of the Underworld. And… you named your dog *Spot*?”

Jim Butcher book Skin Game

Source: Skin Game

“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 book Cold Days

Source: Cold Days

“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 book Storm Front

Source: Storm Front

“Tavi looked wildly around the courtyard, and when his gaze flicked toward them, his face lit witha ferocious smile. "Uncle Bernard! Uncle Bernard!" he shouted, pointing at Doroga. "He followed me home! Can we keep him?”

Jim Butcher Furies of Calderon

Source: Furies of Calderon

“You destroy buildings, fight monsters openly in the streets of the city, work with the police, show up in newspapers, advertise in the phone book, and ride zombie dinosaurs down Michigan Avenue, and think that you work in the shadows? Be reasonable.”

Jim Butcher book Skin Game

Source: Skin Game

“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?”

Jim Butcher Turn Coat

Source: The Dresden Files, Turn Coat (2009), Chapter 23

“It was one of those moments that would have had dramatic music if my life were a movie, but instead I got a radio jingle for some kind of submarine sandwich place blaring over the store's ambient stereo. The movie ofmy life must be really low-budget.”

Jim Butcher Dead Beat

Source: Dead Beat

“Whatever you do, do it for love. If you keep to that, your path will never wander so far from the light that you can never return.”

Jim Butcher book Changes

Source: Changes

“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 book Changes

Source: Changes

“I've done smarter things in my life. Once, for example, I threw myself out of a moving car in order to take on a truckload of lycanthropes singlehandedly."
~Harry Dresden”

Jim Butcher

“Pain is to be endured. It ends or it does not.”

Jim Butcher book Fool Moon

Source: Fool Moon

“Being a wizard gives you more power than most, but it doesn't change your heart. We're all human. We're all of us equally naked before the jaws of pain.”

Jim Butcher book White Night

Source: White Night

“Pansy," Murphy sneered.

Thomas leered at her. "You make my stamen tingle when you talk like that, Sergeant.”

Jim Butcher book Changes

Source: Changes

“Do you have a little white dress? I've had this deep-seated nurse fantasy about you, Murphy.”

Jim Butcher book Storm Front

Source: Storm Front

“You are a drug dealer. To tiny faeries. Shame."

Sanya to Dresden”

Jim Butcher book Changes

Source: Changes

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

Jim Butcher book Storm Front

Source: Storm Front

“You think this is going to work? This peaceful summit thing?”
“Sure,” I said. After a second, I added, “Probably.”
“Probably?”
“Maybe,” I said.
“We’re down to maybe now?”
I shrugged. “We’ll see.”

Jim Butcher book Cold Days

Source: Cold Days

“Apocalypse is a frame of mind." [Nicodemus] said then. "A belief. A surrender to inevitability. It is a despair for the future. It is the death of hope.”

Jim Butcher book Death Masks

Source: Death Masks

“I once lost five years listening to a Pink Floyd album.”

Jim Butcher book Ghost Story

Source: Ghost Story

“Doroga thumped a finger against his skull. Head got nothing to do with the heart. Your heart wants what it wants. Head got to learn that it can only kill the heart or else get out of the way”

Jim Butcher book Academ's Fury

Source: Academ's Fury

“One can have only as much preparation as he has foresight.”

Jim Butcher book Changes

Source: Changes

“Knowledge is your weapon… Kill them with it.”

Jim Butcher Princeps' Fury

Source: Princeps' Fury