Cold Days (The Dresden Files, #14)

by Jim Butcher

As a rule, people aren’t good at handling power. And the second you start to think you’re better at controlling your power than anyone else, you’ve already taken the first step.

“Sometimes I think that’s where most of us are,” I said. “Fighting off the crazy as best we can. Trying to become something better than we were. It’s that second bit that’s important.”

“You say that you were this wicked from the beginning?” Lily asked. “I’m saying I could have been,” I said. “I chose something else. And I’m going to continue choosing something else.”

It couldn’t be seen or touched but it was very, very real. A lot of important things are like that.

Words have a power every bit as terrible and beautiful as magic, and they don’t need a special effects budget to do it, either.

Graves aren’t for the dead. They’re for the loved ones the dead leave behind them. Once those loved ones have gone, once all the lives that have touched the occupant of any given grave had ended, then the grave’s purpose was fulfilled and ended.

Sometimes the things that are good for you, in the long run, hurt for a little while when you first get to them.