Quotes from work
The Dresden Files

Jim Butcher

The Dresden Files is a series of contemporary fantasy/mystery novels written by American author Jim Butcher. The first novel, Storm Front, was published in 2000 by Roc Books.

“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."”

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

The Dresden Files, Blood Rites (2004)

“Harry Dresden: Don't mess with a wizard when he's wizarding!”

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

Source: The Dresden Files, Fool Moon (2001), Chapter 18

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

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

Source: The Dresden Files, Changes (2010), Chapter 18

“Harry Dresden: We still hadn't learned, though, that growing up is all about getting hurt. And then getting over it. You hurt. You recover. You move on. Odds are pretty good you're just going to get hurt again. But each time, you learn something. Each time, you come out of it a little stronger, and at some point you realize that there are more flavors of pain than coffee. There's the little empty pain of leaving something behind-graduating, taking the next step forward, walking out of something familiar and safe into the unknown. There's the big, whirling pain of life upending all of your plans and expectations. There's the sharp little pains of failure, and the more obscure aches of successes that didn't give you what you thought they would. There are the vicious, stabbing pains of hopes being torn up. The sweet little pains of finding others, giving them your love, and taking joy in their life as they grow and learn. There's the steady pain of empathy that you shrug off so you can stand beside a wounded friend and help them bear their burdens.”

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

Source: The Dresden Files, White Night (2007), Chapter 31

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

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

Source: The Dresden Files, Changes (2010), Chapter 33

“Harry Dresden: Kincaid! Bolshevik Muppet!”

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

The Dresden Files, Blood Rites (2004)

“Karrin Murphy: I'm pretty sure there's no Nobel prize for pornography.”

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

The Dresden Files, Blood Rites (2004)

“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?”

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

Source: The Dresden Files, Changes (2010), Chapter 9

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

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

Source: The Dresden Files, Changes (2010), Chapter 7

“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.”

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

Source: The Dresden Files, Changes (2010), Chapter 18

“Harry Dresden: As I pulled into the parking lot, I reflected that odds were that not a lot of clandestine meetings involving mystical assassination, theft of arcane power, and the balance of power in the realms of the supernatural had taken place in a Wal-Mart Super Center. But then again, maybe they had. Hell, for all I knew, the Mole Men used the changing rooms as a place to discuss plans for world domination with the Psychic Jellyfish from Planet X and the Disembodied Brains-in-a-Jar from the Klaatuu Nebula. I know I wouldn’t have looked for them there.”

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

Source: The Dresden Files, Summer Knight (2002), Chapter 18

“Harry Dresden: Santa is a much bigger and more powerful faery than Toot, and I don't know his true name anyway. You'd never see me trying to nab Saint Nick in a magic circle even if I did. I don't think anyone has stones that big.”

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

Source: The Dresden Files, Storm Front (2000), Chapter 6

“Harry Dresden: I wouldn't burden any decent system of faith by participating in it.”

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

Source: The Dresden Files, Death Masks (2003), Chapter 7

“Harry Dresden: Sometimes the most remarkable things seem commonplace. I mean, when you think about it, jet travel is pretty freaking remarkable. You get in a plane, it defies the gravity of a entire planet by exploiting a loophole with air pressure, and it flies across distances that would take months or years to cross by any means of travel that has been significant for more than a century or three. You hurtle above the earth at enough speed to kill you instantly should you bump into something, and you can only breathe because someone built you a really good tin can that seems tight enough to hold in a decent amount of air. Hundreds of millions of man-hours of work and struggle and research, blood, sweat, tears and lives have gone into the history of air travel, and it has totally revolutionized the face of our planet and societies.
But get on any flight in the country, and I absolutely promise you that you will find someone who, in the face of all that incredible achievement, will be willing to complain about the drinks. The drinks, people. That was me on the staircase to Chicago-Over-Chicago. Yes, I was standing on nothing but congealed starlight. Yes, I was walking up through a savage storm, the wind threatening to tear me off and throw me into the freezing waters of lake Michigan far below. Yes, I was using a legendary and enchanted means of travel to transcend the border between one dimension and the next, and on my way to an epic struggle between ancient and elemental forces. But all I could think to say, between panting breaths, was, "Yeah. Sure. They couldn't possibly have made this an escalator."”

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

The Dresden Files, Summer Knight (2002)

“Harry Dresden: Tonight you will be visited by three spirits, the ghosts of indictment past, present and future. They will teach you the true meaning of "you are still a scumbag criminal."”

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

The Dresden Files, White Night (2007)

“Harry Dresden: Blood leaves no stain on a Warden's cloak.”

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

Source: The Dresden Files, Proven Guilty (2006), Chapter 1, Opening line

“Harry Dresden: The world is getting weirder. Darker every single day. Things are spinning around faster and faster, and threatening to go completely awry. Falcons and falconers. The center cannot hold. But in my corner of the country, I'm trying to nail things down. I don't want to live in Victor's jungle, even if it did eventually devour him. I don't want to live in a world where the strong rule and the weak cower. I'd rather make a place where things are a little quieter. Where trolls stay the hell under their bridges and where elves don't come swooping out to snatch children from their cradles. Where vampires respect the limits, and where the faeries mind their p's and q's. My name is Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden. Conjure by it at your own risk. When things get strange, when what goes bump in the night flicks on the lights, when no one else can help you, give me a call. I'm in the book.”

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

Source: The Dresden Files, Storm Front (2000), Chapter 27, final lines of the book

“Harry Dresden: Keep in mind that this appears in the same book of the Bible that approves the death sentence for a child who curses his parents, owners of oxen who injure someone through the owner's negligence, anybody who works or kindles a fire on Sunday, and anyone who has sex with an animal.”

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

The Dresden Files, White Night (2007)

“Harry Dresden: For future reference, I was sort of hoping for a suggestion that didn't sound like it came from that Bolshevik Muppet with all the dynamite.”

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

The Dresden Files, Blood Rites (2004)

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

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

Source: The Dresden Files, Ghost Story (2011), Chapter 21

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