Turn Coat (The Dresden Files, #11)

by Jim Butcher

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.

That was the upside of being human. On the whole, we’re an adaptable sort of being. Certainly, I’d never be able to get rid of my memory of this awful thing, or any of the other awful things I’d Seen—so if the memory couldn’t change, it would have to be me.

“I don’t know if you know what a skinwalker is, but it’s serious trouble. Watch yourself.” Mouse considered that for a moment, and then yawned. I found myself laughing. “Pride goes before a fall, boy.” He wagged his tail at me and rubbed up against my leg, evidently pleased to have made me smile.

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.

Confidence is critical to convincing people that you really are supposed to be somewhere—especially when you aren’t.

There’s a fine line between audacity and idiocy.”

“Because people in hopeless situations come to you for help on a regular basis. And you help them. It’s what you do.”

Like “love,” “hope” is one of those ridiculously disproportional words that by all rights should be a lot longer.

“I am not some clueless mortal you can frighten away,” I said to the hilltop. “I am magi, one of the Wise, and I am worthy of your respect.”

And if I was to die, I was not going to go out in a gibbering heap of terror. If I was to die, it wouldn’t happen because I was half crippled with fear and Sight trauma. If I was to die, it was going to be a bloody and spectacular mess.

I lay on the ground, too tired to get back up, and ground my teeth in determination as it charged me for what would, one way or another, be the last time. I didn’t have the breath to scream, but I could snarl. “And this,” I spat, “is for Kirby, you son of a bitch.” I unleashed my will and screamed, “Laqueus!”

“That was hardly pathetic at all,” it murmured. “Who gifted you with the life fire, little mortal?” “Doubt you know him,” I responded. It was an effort to speak, but I was used to meeting the rigorous demands of life as a reflexive smart-ass. “He’d have taken you out.”

“Stop learning, start dying,” Ebenezar said, in the tone of a man quoting a bedrock-firm maxim. “You’re never too old to learn.”

But lately I’ve started thinking that you don’t ever plan on a single path to victory. You set things up so that you’ve got more than one way to win.

See, here’s the thing. Morgan was right: you can’t win them all. But that doesn’t mean that you give up. Not ever. Morgan never said that part—he was too busy living it.