Are you always a smartass?’Nope. Sometimes I’m asleep.

I love being a wizard. Every day is like Disneyland.

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.

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...

You beg fate to make your fears into reality, Aleran. But for the moment, they are only fears. They may come. If so, then face them and overcome them. Until then, pay them no mind. You have enough to think on.

What’s with that?’ Butters screamed, his voice high and frightened. ‘Just covering his head with his arms? Didn’t he see the lawyer in the movie?

So we get a plan,” I said. “Any suggestions?””Blow up the building,” Kincaid said without looking up. “That works good for vampires. Then soak what’s left in gasoline. Set it on fire. Then blow it all up again.””For future reference, I was sort of hoping for a suggestion that didn’t sound like it came from...

I like to think of it less as embezzling and more as an involuntary goodwill contribution.

If you make some comment even obliquely alluding to menstruation or menopause and its effect on my judgment,” Murphy interrupted, “I will break your arm in eleven places.

You know how confusing the whole good-evil concept is for me.

Age is always advancing and I’m fairly sure it’s up to no good.

I sometimes give myself excellent advice. Occasionally, I even listen to it.

Revenge is like sex, Mister Dresden. It’s best when it comes on slow, quiet, until it all seems inexorable.

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.

The course of history is determined not by battles, by sieges, or usurpation, but by the individuals. The strongest army is, at its most basic level, a collection of individuals. Their decisions, their passions, their foolishness, and their dreams shape the years to come. If there is any lesson to be learned from history, it...

You’re in America now,” I said. “Our idea of diplomacy is showing up with a gun in one hand and a sandwich in the other and asking which you’d prefer.

…This is a place of learning where very few learn anything of value. That you, who have courage and intelligence, are held in contempt by most of your kind here because you have no sorcery… I have seen you protect others, though they consider you to be weaker than they. I have seen a very...

I had a vague memory of being that ridiculous at one time. Let he who hath never worn parachute pants cast the first stone.

You rush a miracle worker, you get lousy miracles!

It isn’t good to hold on too hard to the past. You can’t spend your whole life looking back. Not even when you can’t see what lies ahead. All you can do is keep on keeping on, and try to believe that tomorrow will be what it should be—even if it isn’t what you expected.

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...

Because a sound tree doesn’t have bad roots, Amara. No enterprise of greatnessbegins with treachery, with lying to the people who trust and love you

One ravishing dark-haired beauty wearing leather pants and strategically applied electrical tape, stared hard at me and, when she saw me looking, licked her lips very, very slowly. She trailed a fingertip over her chin, down across her throat, and down over her sternum and gave me a smile so wicked that it’s parents should...

Men plan. Fate Laughs.Guis Alera, First Lord

That we’d figure it out. That you weren’t alone.” Stab.Twist.He was right. It was just that simple.

Thank God for imminent doomsday.

Those who deal in magic learn to see the world in a slightly differnt light than everybody else.you gain a perspective you had considered before. A way of thinking that would never have occurred to you with out exposure to the things a wizard sees and hears.When you look in to some ones eyes you...

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

Da. This is going very well already.”Thomas barked out a laugh. “There are seven of us against the Red King and his thirteen most powerful nobles, and it’s going well?”Mouse sneezed.”Eight,” Thomas corrected himself. He rolled his eyes and said, “And the psycho death faerie makes it nine.””It is like movie,” Sanya said, nodding. “Dibs...

They don’t make morgues with windows. In fact, if the geography allows for it, they hardly ever make morgues above the ground. I guess it’s partly because it must be eisier to refrigerate a bunch of coffin-sized chambers in a room insulated by the earth. But that can’t be all there is to it. Under...

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...

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.

Paranoid? Probably. But just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that there isn’t an invisible demon about to eat your face.

I sidestepped the vampire’s rush, and drove my half of the former blasting rod down at its back, Buffy-like.Maybe it works better on television.

You’re dead, son. Cheer is contraindicated.

Maybe my values are outdated, but I come from an old school of thought. I think that men ought to treat women like something other than just shorter, weaker men with breasts. Try and convict me if I’m a bad person for thinking so. I enjoy treating a woman like a lady, opening doors for...

Caring about someone isn’t complicated. It isn’t easy. But it isn’t complicated, either. Kinda like lifting the engine block out of a car.

Nobody can be bad at everything. There’s no such thing as a perfect screwup.

Bob, would you be willing to take on Evil Bob?”Bob’s eyes darted nervously. “I’d . . . prefer not to. I’d really, really prefer not to. You have no idea. That me was crazy. And buff. He worked out.

Susan hardly had begun to slow down when Tera appeared from between a couple of buildings and loped over to the car. I leaned forward, opened the door, and she got into the backseat. I threw her the extra clothes I had picked up, and she began to dress without comment.It worked,” I said. “We...

When people say the word “convention,” they are usually referring to large gatherings of the employees of companies and corporations who attend a mass assembly, usually in a big hotel somewhere, for the purpose of pretending to learn stuff when they are in fact enjoying a free trip somewhere, time off work, and the opportunity...

She studied my face for a long minute. “Are you going to help my mom?” It was a simple question. But how do you tell a child that things just aren’t that simple, that some questions don’t have simple answers–or any answer at all?

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...

Where instinct fails, intellect must venture.

The only good thing about having your back to the wall is that it makes it really easy to choose which way you’re going to go.

Murphy hung up and I said, to the still-open line, “Hey, if you’ve got someone watching my place, could you call the cops if anyone tries to steal my Star Wars poster? It’s an original.”Then I vindictively hung up on the FBI. It made my inner child happy.

There’re things we keep hidden from one another. Things we hide from ourselves. Things that are kept hidden from us. And things no one knows. You always learn the damnedest things at the worst possible times.

Karrin.”She looked up at me. She looked very young somehow.”Remember what I said yesterday,” I said. “You’re hurt. But you’ll get through it. You’ll be okay.”She closed her eyes tightly. “I’m scared. So scared I’m sick.””You’ll get through it.””What if I don’t?”I squeezed her fingers. “Then I will personally make fun of you every day...

My laboratory,’ I said, experimentally, drawing out each syllable. ‘Why is it that saying it like that always makes me want to follow it with ‘mwoo-hah-hah-hahhhhh’? ”You were overexposed to Hammer Films as a child?’ – Harry Dresden & Bob the Skull, Changes, Jim Butcher

The characters within a book were, from a certain point of view, identical on some fundamental level ‒ there weren’t any images of them, no physical tangibility whatsoever. They were pictures in the reader’s head, constructs of imagination and ideas, given shape by the writer’s work and skill and the reader’s imagination. Parents, of a...