Peace Talks (The Dresden Files, #16)

by Jim Butcher

But you can’t ignore things that are real just because they’re uncomfortable.

Maybe I should get Molly to ask for a TV. Or an Internet … thing. Device. One of those Internet thingies. I figure everyone is so insane about the Internet, there must be something cool there.

“From Mr. Carpenter,” she said. “He says making things right is the first and last thing you should do every day. And that it’s what you always try to do.”

Those who labor never to wrong another see scant value in forgiveness.

Fear is a prison. But when you combine it with secrets, it becomes especially toxic, vicious. It puts us all into solitary, unable to hear one another clearly.

“Only the young think being called old is an insult,” I said, still smiling. “I am what I am, regardless of what anyone calls it. No one can change it, regardless of what anyone calls it. And it mostly means that nothing has managed to kill me yet.”

Because it’s hard, it’s really, really hard, in fact damned near impossible, to exercise power without it having some unexpected consequences. Doesn’t matter what kind of power it is—magic, muscle, political office, electricity, moral authority. Use any of it, and you’re going to find out that as a result, things happen that you didn’t expect.

Home is where you embrace the present and plan the future. It’s where the books are.

You can’t go around making people’s choices for them. Not if you love them.

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.