Top 497 Quotes & Sayings by Jim Butcher

I'm one of those people who think that stories should have a beginning, a middle and an end, and then they're over, and then you tell the next story.

My main source for faith-based stuff is mostly the Bible, and a childhood with a much, much higher-than-median exposure to theological thought.

When a young writer comes up to me with an ambitious idea for a 20-book series, I usually tell him to maybe try something smaller to start off with.

I've gotten into two fights since I've begun studying the martial arts, and each time, I was worried I'd kill the guy. One of my teachers always told me I had good power but bad control.

Everybody should get to make a living with their passion.

When I started, I was pretty sure I was going to be writing some goofy little wizard novels that might make me some part-time money and would hopefully lead to something I could do better.

The impossible we do immediately. The unimaginable takes a little while.

He's Black Council," I said. "Or maybe stupid," Ebenezar countered. I thought about it. "Not sure which is scarier." Ebenezar blinked at me, then snorted. "Stupid, Hoss. Every time. Only so many blackhearted villains in the world, and they only get uppity on occasion. Stupid's everywhere, every day.

HARRY DRESDEN—WIZARD Lost Items Found. Paranormal Investigations. Consulting. Advice. Reasonable Rates. No Love Potions, Endless Purses, Parties, or Other Entertainment

Nearly everyone underestimates how powerful the touch of another person's hand can be. The need to be touched is something so primal, so fundamentally a part of our existence as human beings that its true impact upon us can be difficult to put into words. That power doesn't necessarily have anything to do with sex, either. From the time we are infants, we learn to associate the touch of a human hand with safety, with comfort, with love.

In the name of the Pizza Lord. Charge!

When everything goes to hell, the people who stand by you without flinching - they are your family.

The human mind isn't a terribly logical or consistent place. Most people, given the choice to face a hideous or terrifying truth or to conveniently avoid it, choose the convenience and peace of normality. That doesn't make them strong or weak people, or good or bad people. It just makes them people.

I know it's not thematically in tune with my new job and all, but I find it effective. Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day," I say. "But set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life. Tao of Pratchett. I live by it.

Loneliness is a hard thing to handle. I feel it, sometimes. When I do, I want it to end. Sometimes, when you're near someone, when you touch them on some level that is deeper than the uselessly structured formality of casual civilized interaction, there's a sense of satisfaction in it. Or at least, there is for me. It doesn't have to be someone particularly nice. You don't have to like them. You don't even have to want to work with them. You might even want to punch them in the nose. Sometimes just making that connection is its own experience, its own reward.

Anger is just anger. It isn't good. It isn't bad. It just is. What you do with it is what matters. It's like anything else. You can use it to build or to destroy. You just have to make the choice.

You don't take your cat with you to go bird shopping. Not because the cat isn't polite, but because he's a cat.

Love is patient. Love is kind. Love always forgives, trusts, supports, and endures. Love never fails. When every star in the heavens grows cold, and when silence lies once more on the face of the deep, three things will endure: faith, hope, and love.

Sticks and stones may break your bones, but Chinese throwing stars get you a dozen stitches.

Have you ever felt despair? Absolute hopelessness? Have you ever stood in the darkness and known, deep in your heart, in your spirit, that it was never, ever going to get better? That something had been lost, forever, and that it wasn't coming back?

Sometimes I think that's where most of us are. Fighting off the crazy as best we can. Trying to become something better than we were. It's that second bit that's important.

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.

Laugh whenever you can. Keeps you from killing yourself when things are bad. That and vodka.

Time after time, history demonstrates that when people don't want to believe something, they have enormous skills of ignoring it altogether.

As a whole, people suck. But a person can be extraordinary

Honest. It's almost always best to go with honest. It means you never have to worry about getting your story straight.

Life is a journey. Time is a river. The door is ajar

We've both got into the blue beetle. He got into the red door, I got into the white one.

Faith is about what you do. It's about aspiring to be better and nobler and kinder than you are. It's about making sacrifices for the good of others-- even when there's not going to be anyone telling you what a hero you are.

Sleep is God. Go worship.

We all must die. There is no better way to do so than in the pursuit of something you love.

I had to smile at the man. I mean, you have to smile at idiots and children.

Sometimes the only way to carry a heavy burden is to share it with another

But there were some things I believed in. Some things I had faith in. And faith isn't about perfect attendance to services, or how much money you put on the little plate. It isn't about going skyclad to the Holy Rites, or meditating each day upon the divine. Faith is about what you do. It's about aspiring to be better and nobler and kinder than you are. It's about making sacrifices for the good of others - even when there's not going to be anyone telling you what a hero you are.

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

If you go to your death rather than do everything you might to prevent what is happening, you are merely committing suicide and trying to make yourself feel better about it. That is the act of a coward. It is beneath contempt.

I've been a young man. Boobs are near the center of the universe, until you turn twenty-five or so. Which is also when young men's auto insurance rates go down. This is not a coincidence.

There's always, always a choice. My options might really, truly suck, but that doesn't mean there isn't a choice.

The movie of my life must be really low budget.

Yeah, but I forgot to take my George Orwell-shaped multivitamins along with my breakfast bowl of Big Brother Os this morning.

A man's magic demonstrates what sort of person he is, what is held most deeply inside of him. There is no truer gauge of a man's character than the way in which he employs his strength, his power. I was not a murderer. I was not like Victor Sells. I was Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden. I was a wizard. Wizards control their power. They don't let it control them. And wizards don't use magic to kill people. They use it to discover, to protect, to mend, to help. Not to destroy.

Magic comes from what is inside you. It is a part of you. You can't weave together a spell that you don't beleive in.

Love is another kind of power, which shouldn't surprise you. Magic comes from emotions, among other things. And when two people are together, in that intimacy, when they really, selflessly love each other it changes them both. It lingers on in the energy of their lives, even when they are apart.

Pain is to be endured. It ends or it does not.

Heroism doesn't pay very well. I try to be cold-blooded and money-oriented, but I keep screwing it up.

There is the world that should be and the world that is. We live in one and must create the other.

We have now left Reason and Sanity Junction. Next stop, Looneyville.

Like “love,” “hope” is one of those ridiculously disproportional words that by all rights should be a lot longer.

Regardless of what I think about Islam or Wicca or any other religion, the fact is that it's a group of people. Every faith has its ceremonies. And since it's made up of people, every faith also has its assholes.

All things pass in time. We are far less significant than we imagine ourselves to be. All that we are, all that we have wrought, is but a shadow, no matter how durable it may seem. One day, when the last man has breathed his last breath, the sun will shine, the mountains will stand, the rain will fall, the streams will whisper—and they will not miss him.

There's more magic in a baby's first giggle than in any firestorm a wizard can conjure up, and don't let anyone tell you any different.

Everyone is down on pain, because they forget something important about it: Pain is for the living. Only the dead don't feel it.

Laughter, like love, has power to survive the worst things life has to offer. And to do it with style.

Courage is about learning how to function despite the fear, to put aside your instincts to run or give in completely to the anger born from fear. Courage is about using your brain and your heart when every cell of your body is screaming at your to fight or flee - and then following through on what you believe is the right thing to do.

What is the point of having free will if one cannot occasionally spit in the eye of destiny?

Evil isn’t the real threat to the world. Stupid is just as destructive as Evil, maybe more so, and it’s a hell of a lot more common. What we really need is a crusade against Stupid. That might actually make a difference.

The building was on fire, and it wasn’t my fault.

Every soul is special. They’re all beautiful. They’re all far more significant than anyone on this rock realizes. I think when people are at their best, they’re acting in accordance with their soul. The ones who have gone bad don’t have bad souls. They’ve just given up on keeping in touch with them.

Fear is bred from ignorance. So knowledge is a weapon against it, and reason is the tool of knowledge.

Oh, what would you like on your vegetarian pizza?" "Dead pigs and cows," I said. She glanced up at me and wrinkled her nose. "They're vegetarians," I said defensively.