"Paranoid? Probably. But just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face."
— Jim Butcher (Storm Front)

"When everything goes to hell, the people who stand by you without flinching -- they are your family. "
— Jim Butcher

"Life is a journey. Time is a river. The door is ajar"
— Jim Butcher (Dead Beat)

"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!"
— Jim Butcher (Blood Rites)

"Bob the Skull: You know how confusing the whole good-evil concept is for me."
— Jim Butcher (Proven Guilty)

"Me and polite have never been on close terms."
— Jim Butcher

"Of course Evil's afoot. If it had switched to the metric system it'd be up to a meter by now. "
— Jim Butcher

"In name of the Pizza Lord. Charge!"
— Jim Butcher (Summer Knight)

"Nay, but prithee, with sprinkles 'pon it instead," I said solemnly, "and frosting of white."
— Jim Butcher (Small Favor)

"I died. I died and someone made a clerical error and I am in Heaven."
— Jim Butcher

"The building was on fire, and it wasn’t my fault."
— Jim Butcher (Blood Rites)

"I had to smile at the man. I mean, you have to smile at idiots and children."
— Jim Butcher (Fool Moon)

"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."
— Jim Butcher

"My hair had grown out long and shaggy—not in that sexy-young-rock-star kind of way but in that time-to-take-Rover-to-the-groomer kind of way."
— Jim Butcher (White Night)

"Harry, what you know about women, I could juggle."
— Jim Butcher

"There are old swordsmen and bold swordsmen. But few old, bold swordsmen."
— Jim Butcher (Academ's Fury)

"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."
— Jim Butcher (Fool Moon)

"Don't mess with a wizard when he's wizarding!"
— Jim Butcher

"Polka will never die."
— Jim Butcher (Dead Beat)

"Let's sum up: an unknown number of enemies with unknown capabilities, supported by a gang of madmen, packs of attack animals, and superhumanly intelligent pocket change."
— Jim Butcher

"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."
— Jim Butcher (Fool Moon)

"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."
— Jim Butcher

"Likest thou jelly within thy doughnut?"
— Jim Butcher (Small Favor)

"Kincaid! Bolshevik Muppet!"
— Jim Butcher (Blood Rites)

""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.""
— Jim Butcher (Turn Coat)

"It's all right to be afraid. You just don't let it stop you from doing your job."
— Jim Butcher (Fool Moon)

"A technicality I'm prepared to hide wildly behind."
— Jim Butcher (Storm Front)

"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?"
— Jim Butcher (Storm Front)

"Those who deal in magic learn to see the world in a slightly differnt light than everybody else.you gain a perspective you had considered before. A way of thinking that would never have occurred to you with out exposure to the things a wizard sees and hears.When you look in to some ones eyes you see them in that other light and for just a second they see you in the same way. "
— Jim Butcher

"The human mind is not a terribly logical or consistent place."
— Jim Butcher (Turn Coat)

"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. "
— Jim Butcher (Turn Coat)

"We've both got into the blue beetle. He got into the red door, I got into the white one."
— Jim Butcher (Grave Peril)

""I've never lost a duel to the death. Not one.""
— Jim Butcher (Captain's Fury)

""Do you want your blood to stay where it is sochar-lar?"
Tavi lifted both eyebrows at the unfamiliar word, and glanced at Varg.
"Monkey," Varg supplied, in Aleran. "And male-child."
"He called me monkey boy?" Tavi asked."
— Jim Butcher (Captain's Fury)

"This is what it look like when it WORKS?"
— Jim Butcher (Cursor's Fury)

"Sleep is God. Go worship."
— Jim Butcher

""You never get a straight answer from captains. You should know that by now.""
— Jim Butcher (Captain's Fury)

"I mean, we're all going to die. We know that on an intellectual level. We figure it out when we're still fairly young, and it scares us so badly that we convince ourselves we're immortal for more than a decade afterwards."
— Jim Butcher (Dead Beat)

"I parked in front of the Field Museum under a NO PARKING sign. There were a couple of actual spots I could have used, but the drive was even closer. Besides, I found it aesthetically satisfying to defy municipal code."
— Jim Butcher (Dead Beat)

"Magic comes from what is inside you. It is a part of you. You can't weave together a spell that you don't beleive in."
— Jim Butcher

""Many women have earned titles, Your Grace. It doesn't seem to have been a factor in whether or not they actually received them.""
— Jim Butcher (Academ's Fury)

"Tavi grinned. "Are you with me?"
"The plan is insance," Ehren said. "YOU are insane." He looked around the inside of the tent. "I'll need some pants.""
— Jim Butcher (Captain's Fury)

""I still can't believe," Michael said, sotto voce, "that you came to the Vampires' Masquerade Ball dressed as a vampire.""
— Jim Butcher (Grave Peril)

""No story that juicy was going to stay secret for long.""
— Jim Butcher (Captain's Fury)

""Give it to 'em!"
"Take 'em down!"
"First Aleran!"
"Kick their furry--"
"Assault formation!""
— Jim Butcher (Cursor's Fury)

"Rain was coming down in sheets. I could hear it, on the concrete outside and on the old building above me. It creaked and swayed in the spring thunderstorm and the wind, timbers gently flexing, wise enough with age to give a little, rather than put up stubborn resistance until they broke. I could probably stand to learn something from that."
— Jim Butcher

"Paranoid? Probably. But just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face."
— Jim Butcher (Storm Front)

""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.

And if you're lucky, very lucky, there are a few blazing hot little pains you feel when you realize 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." - Harry Dresden "
— Jim Butcher

"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."
— Jim Butcher (Small Favor)

""If you shoot, I will kill her before I die."
"Yes," Kitai said in a patient tone. "Which is why I have not shot you. Yet.""
— Jim Butcher (Captain's Fury)