Battle Ground (The Dresden Files, #17)

by Jim Butcher

Doesn’t matter where you go in the world—if you’re good at your job, people who are good enough at theirs to see it will respect you for it.

“When a group comes together around something they love,” I said, “it changes things. It changes how they see one another. It becomes a community. Something greater than the sum of its parts.”

The real battle for your own soul isn’t about falling from a great height; it’s about descending, or not, one choice at a time.

I’m not saying pain is what defines us as human beings. But it is, in many ways, what unites us. We all recognize other people in pain. Damned near all of us are moved to do something about it when we see it. It’s our common enemy, though it isn’t, really, an enemy. Pain is, at least when our bodies are working properly, a teacher. A really tough, really strict, and perfectly fair teacher.

In a war, nobody plays fair. That’s what war is.

When people you know die, that gets attention.

There are a lot of ways to get ready for trouble. You get ready to fight. That’s one of them. But it’s even more important that you build something worth fighting for.