Peace Talks (The Dresden Files, #16)

by Jim Butcher

“Harry,” Thomas said, “be real. Everyone wants someone to make us pancakes; we’re all just too grown-up to say it.” I sipped coffee, because it was impossible to argue with logic like that.

Ebenezar had . . . kind of a thing about White Court vampires. (The Paranet called them “whampires,” but I refused to cave in to such silliness, unless it became entirely convenient.)

The svartalves had the vices of their virtues: Those who labor never to wrong another see scant value in forgiveness.

The old man looked faintly disturbed and said something that, for wizards, is akin to dropping an F-bomb. “I don’t know.”

Home, like love, hate, war, and peace, is one of those words that is so important that it doesn’t need more than one syllable. Home is part of the fabric of who humans are. Doesn’t matter if you’re a vampire or a wizard or a secretary or a schoolteacher; you have to have a home, even if only in principle—there has to be a zero point from which you can make comparisons to everything else. Home tends to be it.

My only noticeable feature, as far as he was concerned, was my ability to set myself on full smartass before conversing with dragons.

At the end of the day, people have to be who they are. If you try to take that from them, you diminish them. You reduce them to children, unable to make decisions for themselves. There’s no way to poison your relationship with someone else faster.