More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
I felt a stirring of something; powerful, placid energy around him—the power of faith.
“You, of all people, should know the power of words.”
The real deal. He’s honest, loyal, faithful. He lives his ideals. It gives him power.”
One thing about intimidation is that people can always think up something worse that you could do to them than you can, if you leave their imagination some room to play.
All power, no matter how terrible or benign, whether its wielder is aware of it or not, has a purpose.
Homes, places that people live in and love and have built a life in have a kind of power of their own.
“Not a house,” I said. “A home. There’s a difference.”
They’re the nuclear missiles of the supernatural world. If you show people a supernatural brawl going on, it’s going to scare the snot out of them and the next thing you know, they’re burning everything and everyone in sight. Most people wouldn’t care that one scary guy might have been right and the other was wrong. Both guys are scary, so you ace both of them and sleep better at night.
“Oh. Damn. This is one of those right and wrong issues again, isn’t it.” “Yeah, one of those.” “I’m still confused about this whole morality thing, Harry.”
anyway. “I mean it, Dresden. If you let Murphy get hurt, I’ll kill you.” “Kid, if anything happens to Murphy because of me . . .” I sighed. “I think I’ll let you.”
Any kind of wall is a barrier in more than merely a physical sense. Lots of things are more than what they seem in a purely physical sense.
Something inside me broke with a little snapping sensation, and I felt tears at my eyes. I scowled. They were a child’s tears, to go with a child’s old pain.
Magic is a lot like language: it’s all about stringing things together, linking one thing with another, one idea with another. After you establish links, then you pour power into them and make something happen.
The curve of her smile promised things that were probably illegal, and bad for you, and would carry warnings from the Surgeon General, but that you’d still want to do over and over again.
When people talk about models or movie stars being glamorous, they take it from the old word, from glamour, from the beauty of the high sidhe, faerie magic.
Fear has a lot of flavors and textures. There’s a sharp, silver fear that runs like lightning through your arms and legs, galvanizes you into action, power, motion. There’s heavy, leaden fear that comes in ingots, piling up in your belly during the empty hours between midnight and morning, when everything is dark, every problem grows larger, and every wound and illness grows worse. And there is coppery fear, drawn tight as the strings of a violin, quavering on one single note that cannot possibly be sustained for a single second longer—but goes on and on and on, the tension before the crash of
...more
Reason was my next line of defense. Fear is bred from ignorance. So knowledge is a weapon against it, and reason is the tool of knowledge.
“I guess I’m going to do the right thing.” Even if it kills me, I thought. And all of you, too.
I decided that it must be night. It must be fullest, darkest night. No other time of day could possibly suit my predicament.
The words just hold the magic. They give it a shape and a form, they make it useful, describe the images within.
Some words have a power that has nothing to do with supernatural forces. They resound in the heart and mind, they live long after the sounds of them have died away, they echo in the heart and the soul. They have power, and that power is very real.
“Stars and skies, you’re all right!” He hesitated for a second, and then said, “And looking grim. Even dressed in boxers with yellow duckies on them.”
“For the sake of one soul. For one loved one. For one life.” I called power into my blasting rod, and its tip glowed incandescent white. “The way I see it, there’s nothing else worth fighting a war for.”
What goes around comes around. And sometimes you get what’s coming around.” He paused for a moment, frowning faintly, pursing his lips. “And sometimes you are what’s coming around.
