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Jim Butcher

Jim Butcher Quotes

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Famous Jim Butcher Quotes

“Why?” I asked him tiredly. “What would it have changed? What could you possibly have said that would have made a difference?” “That I was your brother, Harry,” he said. “That I loved you. That I knew a few things about denying the dark parts of your nature. And that we would get through it.” He put his elblows on his knees and rested his forehead on his hands. “That we’d figure it out. That you weren’t alone.” Stab. Twist. He was right. It was just that simple.”

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Book:Cold Days
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“They don't make morgues with windows. In fact, if the geography allows for it, they hardly ever make morgues above the ground. I guess it's partly because it must be eisier to refrigerate a bunch of coffin-sized chambers in a room insulated by the earth. But that can't be all there is to it. Under the earth means a lot more than relative altitude. It's where dead things fit. Graves are under the earth. So are Hell, Gehenna, Hades, and a dozen other reported afterlives. Maybe it says somthing about people. Maybe for us, under the earth is a subtle and profound statement. Maybe ground level provides us with a kind of symbolic boundary marker, an artificial construct that helps us remember that we are alive. Mabye it helps us push death's shadow back from our lives. I live in a basement apartment and like it. What does that say about me? Probably that I overanalyze things.”

HumorDeathHarry Dresden
Book:Death Masks
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“Sure, we'd faced some things as children that a lot of kids don't. Sure, Justin had qualified for his Junior de Sade Badge in his teaching methods for dealing with pain. 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 - gradutaing, 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 expecations. 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 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. And if you're very, very lucky, there are a very few blazing hot little pains you feel when you realized that you are standing in a moment of utter perfection, an instant of triumph, or happiness, or mirth which at the same time cannot possibly last - and yet will remain with you for life. Everyone is down on pain, because they forget something important about it: Pain is for the living. Only the dead don't feel it. Pain is a part of life. Sometimes it's a big part, and sometimes it isn't, but either way, it's a 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.”

LifeWisdomPainHarry DresdenElaine Mallory
Author:Jim Butcher
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“But… all I said was that I was scared." After what you got to experience? That's smart, kid," I said. "I'm scared, too. Every time something like this happens, it scares me. But being strong doesn't get you through. Being smart does. I've beaten people and things who were stronger than I was, because they didn't use their heads, or because I used what I had better than they did. It isn't about muscle, kiddo, magical or otherwise. It's about your attitude. About your mind." She nodded slowly and said, "About doing things for the right reasons." You don't throw down like this just because you're strong enough to do it," I said. "You do it because you don't have much choice. You do it because it's unacceptable to walk away, and still live with yourself later." She stared at me for a second, and then her eyes widened. "Otherwise, you're using power for the sake of using power." I nodded. "And power tends to corrupt. It isn't hard to love using it, Molly. You've got to go in with the right attitude or…" Or the power starts using you," she said. She'd heard the argument before, but this was the first time she said the words slowly, thoughtfully, as if she'd actually understood them, instead of just parroting them back to me. Then she looked up. "That's why you do it. Why you help people. You're using the power for someone other than yourself.”

AttitudePowerDisciplineHarry DresdenMolly Carpenter
Book:White Night
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“Magic comes from the heart, from your feelings, your deepest expressions of desire. That's why black magic is so easy—it comes from lust, from fear and anger, from things that are easy to feed and make grow. The sort I do is harder. It comes from something deeper than that, a truer and purer source—harder to tap, harder to keep, but ultimately more elegant, more powerful. My magic. That was at the heart of me. It was a manifestation of what I believed, what I lived. It came from my desire to see to it that someone stood between the darkness and the people it would devour. It came from my love of a good steak, from the way I would sometimes cry at a good movie or a moving symphony. From my life. From the hope that I could make things better for someone else, if not always for me. Somewhere, in all of that, I touched on something that wasn't tapped out, in spite of how horrible the past days had been, something that hadn't gone cold and numb inside of me. I grasped it, held it in my hand like a firefly, and willed its energy out, into the circle I had created with the spinning amulet on the end of its chain.”

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Book:Fool Moon
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“I'm not a Wiccan. I'm not big on churches of any kind, despite the fact that I've spoken, face-to-face, with an archangel of the Almighty. 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. Faith is a power of its own, and one even more elusive and difficult to define than magic.”

FaithHarry Dresden
Book:Changes
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“You're supposed to be a spirit of intellect. I don't understand why you're obsessed with sex." Bob's voice got defensive. "It's an academic interest, Harry." "Oh yeah? Well maybe I don't think it's fair to let your academia go peeping in other people's houses." "Wait a minute. My academia doesn't just peep -" I held up a hand. "Save it. I don't want to hear it." He grunted. "You're trivializing what getting out for a bit means to me, Harry. You're insulting my masculinity." "Bob," I said, "you're a skull . You don't have any masculinity to insult." "Oh yeah?" Bob challenged me. "Pot kettle black, Harry! Have you gotten a date yet? Huh? Most men have something better to do in the middle of the night than play with their chemistry sets.”

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Book:Storm Front
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“It’s boring.” “Oh,” I said. I rubbed at my jaw. “You think I should have gone four-color?” Bob stared at me for a second and said, “I have nightmares about Hell, where all I do is add up numbers and try to have conversations with people like you.” I glowered up at the skull and nodded. “Okay, fine. You think it needs more drama.” “More anything. Drama would do. Or breasts.” I sighed and saw where that line of thought was going. “I am not going to hire a leggy secretary, Bob. Get over it.” “I didn’t say anything about legs. But as long as we’re on the subject . . .”

LegsBobHarry DresdenJim Butcher
Book:Side Jobs
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“For a man so strong, he was gentle. When his hands, his arms, his mouth were on her, he moved as if afraid she might shatter if held too tightly. Their nights together had been and remained a blaze of passion, for he was a wickedly patient lover who took delight in her responses to him. But more than that, in the quiet hours after he would hold her, both of them weary, content, sleepy. She would lie in his arms and feel no worry, or sadness, or anxiety. She only felt beautiful. And desired. And safe.”

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Book:Academ's Fury
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“What is going to happen to the Aurorans?" "They are prisoners of war," Albion said. "I should imagine they will be set to work at the base of the Spire." Grimm tightened his jaw. "No, sir." "No?" "No, sir," Grimm said. "I've seen that place. You might as well tie a noose around their necks and stand them on blocks of ice, if you want them to die a slow death. It will be cleaner." "I'm not sure why this concerns you, Captain," Albion said. "Because they surrendered to me," Grimm said. "They gave me their parole, sir. They could have fought on with no real chance of victory, and it would have been bloody. But that surrender saved blood and lives of Albions and Aurorans alike. I will not see Captain Castillo repaid with such churlish treatment.”

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Book:The Aeronaut's Windlass
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“When Predator sailed into war, she sang. The rapid winds and rising shrieks suddenly blended into a single harmonious tone. Lines in the rigging and the yards and the masts themselves quivered in time, and began giving off their own notes of music, in harmony with one another. As the speed increased, the chord rose and rose, and built and built, until it reached a crescendo of pure, eerie, inhuman fury. Grimm felt the music rise around him, felt the ship straining eagerly to her task, and his own heart raced in fierce exultation in time with her. Every line of the ship, every smudge upon her decks, every stain upon the leathers of his aeronauts leapt into his mind in vibrant detail. He could feel the ship's motion, forward and down, could feel the wind of her passage, could feel the rising terror of his crew. One of the men screamed--one of them always did--and then the entire crew joined in with Predator, shrieking their battle cries together with their ship's. The ship would not fail them--Grimm knew it; he felt it, the way he could feel sunlight on his face or the rake of wind in his hair.”

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Book:The Aeronaut's Windlass
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“We didn't have time to get you an actual haircut," she said. "Seriously, did you do it yourself? Maybe without a mirror?" I put a hand up to my head self-consciously and said, "I had some help from the General. And, hey, I didn't say anything about your man-shoes." "They're steel-toed," she said calmly. "In case I need to plant them in anyone's ass as a result of him calling them man-shoes. And seriously, you let Toot help you with your hair?”

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Book:Skin Game
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“Please, help me. Young werewolves in love. I turned to walk into the house, moving carefully. I had never much believed in God. Well, that's not quite true. I believed that there was a God, or something close enough to it to warrant the name if there were demons, there had to be angels, right? If there was a Devil, somewhere, there had to be a God. But He & I had never really seen things in quite the same terms. All the same. I flashed a look up at the ceiling. I didn't say or think any words, but if God was listening, I hoped he got the message nonetheless. I didn't want of these children getting themselves killed.”

FoolMoonFilesDresdenButcherJimFool Moon
Book:Fool Moon
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“Hospital waits are bad ones. The fact that they happen to pretty much all of us, sooner or later, doesn’t make them any less hideous. They’re always just a little too cold. It always smells just a little bit too sharp and clean. It’s always quiet, so quiet that you can hear the fluorescent lights - another constant, those lights - humming. Pretty much everyone else there is in the same bad predicament you are, and there isn’t much in the way of cheerful conversation. And there’s always a clock in sight. The clock has superpowers. It always seems to move too slowly. Look up at it and it will tell you the time. Look up an hour and a half later, and it will tell you two minutes have gone by. Yet it somehow simultaneously has the ability to remind you of how short life is, to make you acutely aware of how little time someone you love might have remaining to them.”

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Book:Small Favor
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“Let's assume it was probably internal fairy stuff. That cuts it down to three suspects." "Three?" "The three people who could have managed it. Summer Queen, Winter Queen, Winter Knight. 1, 2, 3." "Harry, I said it could have been one of the queens...." I blinked up at the skull. "There are more than two?" "Yea... technically there are three." "THREE?" "...In each court." THREE QUEENS? In each court?! That's just silly..." "No, not if you think about it. Each court has three queens. The queen who was, the queen who is, and the queen who is to come." "Greeeat.... Which one does the knight work for?" "All of them. It's kind of a group thing. He has different duties to each queen." I felt the headache start at the base of my neck and creep towards the base of my head.”

FaerieTitaniaSummer CourtWinter CourtFaerie CourtsFaerie LoreMabCourt Dynamics
Book:Summer Knight
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“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.”

FunnySarcasmJim ButcherSummer Knight
Book:Summer Knight
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