Cold Days (The Dresden Files, #14)

by Jim Butcher

Chicago is what a polite person would call a colorful place. It’s a den of crime and corruption. And it’s a monument to architecture and enterprise. It’s violent and dangerous, and an epicenter of music and the arts. The good, the bad, the ugly, the sublime, monsters and angels—they’re all here.

“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.”

People think that civilization and organized religion have somehow erased the spirits that exist in nature, in all the world. They haven’t.

People aren’t the omnipotent force for destruction that we arrogantly believe we are. We can change things, true, but we never really destroyed those old spirits and presences of the wild. We aren’t that powerful.

Someone that short should not be that disturbing.

“It seems unlikely that your cares will lighten,” Queen Mab replied. “Improve your mind.”