Top 497 Quotes & Sayings by Jim Butcher - Page 4

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American author Jim Butcher.
Last updated on April 21, 2025.
Never let it be said that Harry Dresden is afraid of a dried, dead bug. Creepy or not, I wasn't going to let it ruin my concentration. So I scooped it up with the corner of the phone book and popped it into the middle drawer of my desk. Out of sight, out of mind. So I have a problem with creepy, dead, poisonous things. So sue me.
So in addition to a feisty new Black Court partner in the war dance between the Council and the Vampire Courts, I also got angry lust bunny movies stars, deadly curses, and a thoroughly embarrassing job as my investigative cover. Oh, and bean curd pizza, which is just wrong. What a mess. I made a mental note: The next time I saw Thomas, I was going to punch him right in the nose.
I'm amazing and studly, but I have limits. — © Jim Butcher
I'm amazing and studly, but I have limits.
You rush a miracle worker, you get lousy miracles!
It was one of those moments that would have had dramatic music if my life were a movie, but instead I got a radio jingle for some kind of submarine sandwich place blaring over the store's ambient stereo. The movie of my life must be really low-budget.
Erlking,” I told her. “Big-time bad guy. Wants to eat me.” “Why?” she asked. “Well. I met him,” I said.
Paranoid? Probably. But just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face.
The One created us all to be free. To learn. To find common cause with others and to grow stronger and wiser. But the ancient enemy perverts that union of strengths. With the enemy, there is no choice, no freedom. They take. They force a joining of all things, until nothing else remains. --Doroga
He had hard, steady eyes, and all the comforting, reassuring charm of a dental drill. - Harry Dresden describing Morgan
Doroga thumped a finger against his skull. Head got nothing to do with the heart. Your heart wants what it wants. Head got to learn that it can only kill the heart or else get out of the way
Because a sound tree doesn't have bad roots, Amara. No enterprise of greatness begins with treachery, with lying to the people who trust and love you
I checked my gear, my pockets, my shoelaces, and realized that I had crossed the line between making sure I was ready and trying to postpone the inevitable.
Son. Everyone dies alone. That's what it is. It's a door. It's one person wide. When you go through it, you do it alone. But it doesn't mean you've got to be alone before you go through the door. And believe me, you aren't alone on the other side.
And you've got that look on your face again." "I can't help it, "Ehren said. "You're about to walk to breakfast, arn't you, regardless of who is in the way?" "Yes," Tavi said. Ehren sighed. "Let's hear it." Tavi told him the plan. "That's insane," Ehren said. "It could work." "You arn't going to have anyone come along to bail you out this time," Ehren pointed out. Tavi grinned. "Are you with me?" "The plan is insane," Ehren said. "You are insane." He looked around inside the tent. "I'll need some pants.
Last year in the U.S. alone more than nine hundred thousand people were reported missing and not found... That's out of three hundred million, total population. That breaks down to about one person in three hundred and twenty-five vanishing. Every year.... Maybe it's a coincidence, but it's almost the same loss ratio experienced by herd animals on the African savannah to large predators.
The best thing about my faerie godmother is that the creepy just keeps on coming. — © Jim Butcher
The best thing about my faerie godmother is that the creepy just keeps on coming.
Bring it, Darth Bathrobe!
Keep it up, wise guy. I'm always going to be taller than you once you're lying unconscious on the ground.
Me and polite have never been on close terms.
I don't want to live in a world where the strong rule and the weak cower. I'd rather make a place where things are a little quieter. Where trolls stay the hell under their bridges and where elves don't come swooping out to snatch children from their cradles. Where vampires respect the limits, and where the faeries mind their p's and q's. My name is Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden. Conjure by it at your own risk. When things get strange, when what goes bump in the night flicks on the lights, when no one else can help you, give me a call. I'm in the book.
Put some clothes on, you weird, yellow-eyed, table-dancing, werewolf-training, cryptic, stare-me-right-in-the-eyes-and-don't-even-blink wench.
If I need you I'll give you a signal.' What signal?" I'll imitate the scream of a terrified little girl
Isana felt her throat tighten. "We failed." Serai lifted her chin and patted Isana's arm firmly. "We have not yet succeeded. There is a difference.
Oh," the girl said, shaking her head. "Don't be so simple. People adore monsters. They fill their songs and stories with them. They define themselves in relation to them. You know what a monster is, young shade? Power. Power and choice. Monsters make choices. Monsters shape the world. Monsters force us to become stronger, smarter, better. They sift the weak from the strong and provide a forge for the steeling of souls. Even as we curse monsters, we admire them. Seek to become them, in some ways." Her eyes became distant. "There are far, far worse things to be than a monster.
Molly, you are a good person. Don't let anyone take that away from you. Not even yourself.
...as nervous as a bird in a coal mine.
My office is in a building in midtown Chicago. It's an older building, and not in the best of shape, especially since there was that problem with the elevator last year. I don't care what anyone says, that wasn't my fault. when a giant scorpion the size of an Irish wolfhound is tearing its way through the roof of your elevator car, you get real willing to take desperate measures.
The wacky thing about those bad guys is that you can't count on them to be obvious. They forget to wax their mustaches and goatees, leave their horns at home, send their black hats to the dry cleaner's. They're funny like that.
Thomas has the kind of whiter-than-white boyish grin that makes women's panties spontaneously evaporate.
Right,' Thomas said. 'Where are we headed?' 'To where they treat me like royalty,' I said. 'We're going to Burger King?' I rubbed the heel of my hand against my forehead and spelled fratricide in a subvocal mutter, but I had to spell out temporary insanity and justifiable homicide, too, before I calmed down enough to speak politely. 'Just take a left and drive. Please.' 'Well,' Thomas said, grinning, 'since you said 'please' - Thomas Raith & Harry Dresden, Small Favor, Jim Butcher
Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of trauma, I will fear no concussion.
He gave me a severe look over his spectacles and said, as if he thought the words were deadly venom and might kill me, "You are an untidy person.
Everyone stopped to blink at that for a second. I mean, come on. Impaled by a guided frozen turkey missile. Even by the standards of the quasi-immortal creatures of the night, that ain't something you see twice. "For my next trick," I panted into the startled silence, "anvils.
You need a prostate to understand,” I said.
You're such a cynic," Molly said. "I think cynics are playful and cute.
I hate what you represent." ... "Power without conviction." Isana replied, her tone lifeless, matter of fact. "Ambition without conscience. Decent folk suffer at the hands of those like you.
I would hit you on the head with a rock and drag you away from this. But it would only shatter the rock.
Paranoia is a survival trait when you run in my circles. It gives you something to do in your spare time, coming up with solutions to ridiculous problems that aren't ever going to happen. Except when one of them does, at which point you feel way too vindicated. - Harry Dresden, Changes, Jim Butcher
Ack!" I said. Fearless master of the witty dialogue, that's me. — © Jim Butcher
Ack!" I said. Fearless master of the witty dialogue, that's me.
Its amazing waht you can get used to if your daily allowance of bizarre is high enough.'......Harry Dresden
Hello Angel,'Michael rumbled, and leaned over to give the woman a kiss on the cheek. She accepted it with all the loving tolerance of a Komodo dragon. 'Don't you hello angel me. Do you know what I had to go through to find a baby-sitter, get all the way out here, get the money together and then get the sword back for you?
Don't mess with a wizard when he's wizarding!
It is the prerogative of wizards to be grumpy. It is not, however, the prerogative of freelance consultants who are late on their rent, so instead of saying something smart, I told the woman on the phone, "Yes, ma'am. How can I help you today?
I believe that there's a cloud for every silver lining,' I said.
I'm not a philosopher, Harry," [Michael] said. "But here's something for you to think about, at least. 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.
Man. Being mostly dead is hard on a guy.
Being a wizard gives you more power than most, but it doesn't change your heart. We're all human. We're all of us equally naked before the jaws of pain.
As far as the Council is concerned, the U.S. Wardens are a bunch of mushrooms." "Eh?" "Kept in the dark and fed on bullshit.
I'm sure that you psychotic necro-wannabes with delusions of godhood are all about sharing with your fellow maniacs.
Jobs are a part of life. Maybe you've heard of the concept. It's called work? See, what happens is that you suffer through doing annoying and humiliating things until you get paid not enough money. Like those Japanese game shows, only without all the glory.
I'm so pretty, it's hard for me to think of myself as intelligent. — © Jim Butcher
I'm so pretty, it's hard for me to think of myself as intelligent.
I checked the icebox. The faeries usually brought some sort of food to stock the icebox and the pantry when they cleaned, but they could have mighty odd ideas about what constituted a healthy diet. One time I'd opened the pantry and found nothing but boxes and boxes and boxes of Fruit Loops. I had a near-miss with diabetes, and Thomas, who was never quite sure where the food had come from, declared that I had clearly been driven Fruit Loopy.
I like to stay cozy with my paranoia, not pass her around to my friends and family.
I love watching him think," Maeve told Lily. "You can almost hear that poor little hamster running and running on its wheel.
Ease off the martyr throttle.
Ah. Medieval-style ransom.” Toot looked confused. “He did run some, but I stopped him, my lord. Like, just now. In front of you. Right over there.” There were several conspicuous sounds behind me, the loudest from my apprentice, and I turned to eye everyone else. They were all either covering smiles or holding them back— poorly. “Hey, peanut gallery,” I said. “This isn’t as easy as I’m making it look.” “You’re doing fine,” Karrin said, her eyes twinkling. I sighed. “Come on, Toot,” I said, and walked over to Hook.
Paradox is an overrated threat. There is...a quality similar to inertia at work. Once an event has occurred, there is an extremely strong tendency for that event to occur. The larger, more significant, or more energetic the event, the more it tends to remain as it originally happened, despite any interference." I frowned. "There's...a law of conservation of history?
You must be Warden Ramirez." This is the part where I got nervous. Ramirez loved women. Ramirez never shut up about women. Well, he never shut up about anything in general, but he'd go on and on about various conquests and feats of sexual athleticism and— "A virgin?" Lara blurted. Lara blurted. She turned her head to me, grey eyes several shades paler than they had been, and very wide. "Really, Harry, I'm not sure what to say. Is he a present?
...the Female Once-Over - a process by which one woman creates a detailed profile of another woman based upon about a million subtle details of clothing, jewelry, makeup, and body type, and then decides how much of a social threat she might be. Men have a parallel process, but it's binary: Does he have beer? If yes, will he share with me?
Well. We’ll just have to hope that this wasn’t a loup-garou, I guess.” “If it was a louper, you’d know,” Bob said wisely. “In the middle of this town, you’d have a dozen people dead every time the full moon came around. What’s going on?” “A dozen people are dying every time the full moon comes around.
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