Skin Game (The Dresden Files, #15)

by Jim Butcher

There’s power in the touch of another person’s hand. We acknowledge it in little ways, all the time. There’s a reason human beings shake hands, hold hands, slap hands, bump hands.

But they were doughnuts of darkness. Evil, damned doughnuts, tainted by the spawn of darkness … … which could obviously be redeemed only by passing through the fiery, cleansing inferno of a wizardly digestive tract.

The dead don’t need justice. That’s for those of us who are left looking down at the remains.

“You destroy buildings, fight monsters openly in the streets of the city, work with the police, show up in newspapers, advertise in the phone book, and ride zombie dinosaurs down Michigan Avenue, and think that you work in the shadows? Be reasonable.”

Doesn’t matter how pretty you are. What’s important is how pretty you feel. No one feels pretty when they hear “no” often enough.

“Complicated?” she asked. She shook her head. “It isn’t complicated. You just open up and let someone in. And whatever comes after that, you face it together.”

“You think your power is what shapes the world you walk in. But that is an illusion. Your choices shape your world. You think your power will protect you from the consequences of those choices. But you are wrong. You create your own rewards. There is a Judge. There is Justice in this world. And one day you will receive what you have earned. Choose carefully.”

I remember very little of my father, but one thing I do remember is him telling me always to be polite. It costs you nothing but breath, and can buy you as much as your life.

‘Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor Hell a fury like a woman scorned.’”

“Home is where, when you go there and tell people to get out, they have to leave.”

“Belief in a story,” Uriel said, “of good confronting evil, of light overcoming darkness, of love transcending hate.” He tilted his head. “Isn’t that where all faith begins?”