Dresden Quotes

“I don't care about whose DNA has recombined with whose. When everything goes to hell, the people who stand by you without flinching--they are your family.”
― Jim Butcher, Proven Guilty

“Kids. You gotta love them. I adore children. A little salt, a squeeze of lemon--perfect.”
― Jim Butcher, Storm Front

“I read an article once that said that when women have a conversation, they're communicating on five levels. They follow the conversation that they're actually having, the conversation that is specifically being avoided, the tone being applied to the overt conversation, the buried conversation that is being covered only in subtext, and finally the other person's body language.
That is, on many levels, astounding to me. I mean, that's like having a freaking superpower. When I, and most other people with a Y chromosome, have a conversation, we're having a conversation. Singular. We're paying attention to what is being said, considering that, and replying to it. All these other conversations that have apparently been booing on for the last several thousand years? I didn't even know that they existed until I read that stupid article, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one.
...
So, ladies, if you ever have some conversation with your boyfriend or husband or brother or male friend, and you are telling him something perfectly obvious, and he comes away from it utterly clueless? I know it's tempting to thing to yourself, 'The man can't possibly be that stupid!'
But yes. Yes, he can.
Our innate strengths just aren't the same. We are the mighty hunters, who are good at focusing on one thing at a time. For crying out loud, we have to turn down the radio in the car if we suspect we're lost and need to figure out how to get where we're going. That's how impaired we are. I'm telling you, we have only the one conversation. Maybe some kind of relationship veteran like Michael Carpenter can do two, but that's pushing the envelope. Five simultaneous conversations? Five?
Shah. That just isn't going to happen. At least, not for me.”
― Jim Butcher, Cold Days

“Everyone is down on pain, because they forget something important about it: Pain is for the living. Only the dead don't feel it.”
― Jim Butcher, White Night

“There's power in the night. There's terror in the darkness. Despite all our accumulated history, learning, and experience, we remember. We remember times when we were too small to reach the light switch on the wall, and when darkness itself was enough to make us cry out in fear....”
― Jim Butcher, Turn Coat

“He's Gandalf on crack and an IV of Red Bull, with a big leather coat and a .44 revolver in his pocket.”
― Jim Butcher

“She looked up at me with a polite smile, her dark hair long and appealing...I liked the smile.
Maybe I didn't look like a beaten-up bum. Maybe on me it just looked ruggedly determined.
"I'm sorry, sir," she said, "but the addiction counseling center is on twenty-six."
Sigh.”
― Jim Butcher, Turn Coat

“We're ostriches and the whole world is sand.”
― Jim Butcher, Small Favor

“Whenever you've got a choice, do good, kiddo. It isn't always fun or easy, but in the long run it makes your life better.”
― Jim Butcher, Under My Hat: Tales from the Cauldron

“Please, help me. Young werewolves in love. I turned to walk into the house, moving carefully.

I had never much believed in God. Well, that's not quite true. I believed that there was a God, or something close enough to it to warrant the name if there were demons, there had to be angels, right? If there was a Devil, somewhere, there had to be a God. But He & I had never really seen things in quite the same terms.

All the same. I flashed a look up at the ceiling. I didn't say or think any words, but if God was listening, I hoped he got the message nonetheless. I didn't want of these children getting themselves killed.”
― Jim Butcher, Fool Moon

“For a second, I wanted very badly to know a spell that would let me melt through the floor in a quivering puddle of please-don't-kill-me.”
― Jim Butcher, Skin Game

“If I lived through the next day or so, I needed to start keeping track of where these jokers liked to get their bloodthirsty freak on. It might give me an edge someday. Or at least a list of places that could use a nice burning down. I hadn't burned down a building in ages.”
― Jim Butcher, Cold Days

“She bowed her head and said, "Lord of hosts, please stand with us against this darkness." The quiet, bedrock-deep energy of true faith brushed against me.
Murphy echoed the gesture and the amen. Thomas and I tried to look theologically invisible.”
― Jim Butcher, Proven Guilty

“You're going to have to take care of yourself," Karrin said quietly. "Over the next few weeks. Rest. Give yourself a chance to heal. Keep the wound on your leg clean. Get to a doctor and get that arm into a proper cast. I know you can't feel it, but it's important that--"

I stood, leaned over the bed, and kissed her on the mouth.

Her words dissolved into a soft sound that vibrated against my lips. Then her good arm slid around my neck, and there wasn't any sound at all. It was a long kiss. A slow kiss. A good one. I didn't draw away until it came to its end. I didn't open my eyes for a moment after.

"...oh...," she said in a small voice. Her hand slid down my arm to lie upon mine.

"We do crazy things for love," I said quietly, and turned my hand over, fingers curling around hers.”
― Jim Butcher, Skin Game

“The sun had just gone down, and its afterglow was backlighting the city, which formed low cliffs around the bucolic void to the idle stockyards. The city was blacked out because bombers might come, so Billy didn’t get to see Dresden do one of the most cheerful things a city is capable of doing when the sun goes down, which is to wink its lights on one by one.


There was a broad river to reflect those lights, which would have made their nighttime winkings very pretty indeed. It was the Elbe.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“Dresden war eine wunderbare Stadt, voller Kunst und Geschichte und trotzdem kein von sechshundertfünfzigtausend Dresdnern zufällig bewohntes Museum. Die Vergangenheit und die Gegenwart lebten miteinander im Einklang. Eigentlich müßte es heißen: im Zweiklang. Und mit der Landschaft zusammen, mit der Elbe, den Brücken, den Hügelhängen, den Wäldern und mit den Gebirgen am Horizont, ergab sich sogar ein Dreiklang. Geschichte, Kunst und Natur schwebten über Stadt und Tal, vorn Meißner Dom bis zum Großsedlitzer Schloßpark, wie ein von seiner eignen Harmonie bezauberter Akkord.”
― Erich Kästner

“Whatever happened to "Ia, Ia, Cthulu fthtagn"? ... No one has a sense of style anymore
-Harry Dresden”
― Jim Butcher

“I was doing the new Summer Lady a favor, running down a rogue
storm sylph. Got to go all over the place in those tornado-chaser
geekmobiles. You should have seen the look on the driver's face when he
realized that the tornado was chasing us.”
― Jim Butcher, Blood Rites

“England has her Stratford, Scotland has her Alloway, and America, too, has her Dresden. For there, on August 11, 1833, was born the greatest and noblest of the Western World; an immense personality, -- unique, lovable, sublime; the peerless orator of all time, and as true a poet as Nature ever held in tender clasp upon her loving breast, and, in words coined for the chosen few, told of the joys and sorrows, hopes, dreams, and fears of universal life; a patriot whose golden words and deathless deeds were worthy of the Great Republic; a philanthropist, real and genuine; a philosopher whose central theme was human love, -- who placed 'the holy hearth of home' higher than the altar of any god; an iconoclast, a builder -- a reformer, perfectly poised, absolutely honest, and as fearless as truth itself -- the most aggressive and formidable foe of superstition -- the most valiant champion of reason -- Robert G. Ingersoll.”
― Herman E. Kittredge, Ingersoll: A Biographical Appreciation

“All you can do is try to believe that tomorrow will be what it should be- even if it isn't what you expected.”
― Jim Butcher

“...There is something holy, something divine, hidden in the most ordinary situations, and it is up to each one of you to discover it.'
'What's that supposed to mean?' I asked.
'That the good that will come is not always obvious. Nor easy to see. Nor in the place we would expect to find it. Nor what we personally desire. You should consider that the good being created by the events this night may have nothing to do with the defeat of supernatural evils or endangered lives. It may be something very quiet. Very ordinary.”
― Jim Butcher, Proven Guilty

“There was a big number over the door of the building. The number was five. Before the Americans could go inside, their only English-speaking guard told them to memorize their simple address, in case they got lost in the big city. Their address was this: 'Schlachthof-fünf.' Schlachthof means slaughterhouse. Fünf was good old five.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“concentrate on what you will do, not what you should have done.”
― Jim Butcher

“In Dresden, Sylvia Morris witnessed the ransacking of the Jewish department store - Etam's [on Kristallnacht, 9 November 1938]. 'Dresden had been peaceful and not pro-Nazi so this was a major event,' she recalled. 'We girls in the Töchterhaus made our terrified landlady go to the store to buy things. We opened all the windows and sang Mendelssohn songs as loudly as we could.”
― Julia Boyd, Travellers in the Third Reich

“Napoleon's aides broadcast the news to the people that the Emperor had covered the 1,000 kilometres from Dresden in only four days. In other words, he had broken the world retreating record, vive l'Empereur.”
― Stephen Clarke, How the French Won Waterloo: Or Think They Did

“Michael sighed. "Harry, God does protect us from harm -- it's part of what I and my brothers in arms are tasked to do. But He's a great deal less involved in protecting us from the consequences of our choices.”
― Jim Butcher

“Britain and Germany thought they were winning World War II by trying to bomb the other into submission. In reality, they were destroying themselves as global powers, and (ironically, similar to one of the firestorms their city bombings caused), creating a vacuum on the world stage that the United States and the Soviet Union rushed to fill as superpowers in the post-war years.”
― Stewart Stafford

“Mab raised a hand as I began to speak and said, her voice tired and uninflected, “Yes. You defy me. Obviously. You always do. In the interests of efficiency, let us assume you have uttered some mystifying reference to mortal popular nonsense, I have glared at you and reminded you of the power I hold over you, you have confirmed that you continue to understand the circumstances that require me to tolerate your insouciance, and we have both agreed to continue this ridiculous dance in the future, presumably for the remainder of time.”
― Jim Butcher