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.

Hell’s bells, irony blows.

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

I choose my battles, Dresden. Not you.” She looked up at me calmly. “Let me put this in terms that will get through your skull: My friend is going to save a child from monsters....

I put on the boots and kicked some monster ass.

Ease off the martyr throttle.

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

Think of every fairy-tale villainess you’ve ever heard of. Think of the wicked witches, the evil queens, the mad enchantresses. Think of the alluring sirens, the hungry ogresses, the savage she-beasts. Think of them and...

Peabody may not have seen the man turn into a grizzly, but he was bright enough to know that Injun Joe was getting set to adjust another relative ass-to-ears ratio.

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...

I have nightmares about hell, where all I do is add up numbers and try to have conversations with people like you.

But I don’t understand God. I don’t understand how he could see the way people treat one another, and not chalk up the whole human race as a bad idea.

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

…the cab of the truck heated up nicely, its windows fogging. I felt like a Dickens character. I thought about explaining that to Mouse, just to occupy my thoughts, but he was suffering enough without...

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

Sleep is God. Go worship.

Death is only frightening from the near side.

People love dogs. You can never go wrong adding a dog to the story.

She frowned at me. “You need some rest. You look like hell. And you’re obviously tired enough to have gotten the giggles.”Wizards don’t giggle,” I said, hardly able to speak. “This is cackling.

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...

But you’d get arguments from all kinds of people that the Bible has got to be perfect. That God would not permit such errors to be made in the Holy Word.””I thought God gave everyone...

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...

I love you.” Why it worked right then, why the webbing of my godmother’s spell frayed as though the words had been an open flame, I don’t know. I haven’t found any explanation for it....

Bring it, Darth Bathrobe!

That’s Doctor Smart-ass. I didn’t spend eight years in insult college to be called Mister.

Wait. You work for me?””I prefer to think of it as managing your incompetence.

There are a lot of people he’s taught. Trained. Defended. And he’s been an example. No single one of us can ever be what he was. But together, maybe we can.

I’m so pretty, it’s hard for me to think of myself as intelligent.

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...

Thomas was an annoying wiseass who tended to make everyone he met want to kill him, and when I have that much in common with someone, I can’t help but like him a little.

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

…as nervous as a bird in a coal mine.

When I’m in turmoil, when I can’t think, when I’m exhausted and afraid and feeling very, very alone, I go for walks. It’s just one of those things I do. I walk and I walk...

Tavi spent an eternity in misery, longing for death to bring sweet release from the unrelenting torment. The others gathered at the side of his bunk on the ship, keeping a deathwatch over him.”I don’t...

I admit,” Morgan said with another withering look, “it’s no donut.

I died. I died and someone made a clerical error and I am in Heaven.

Don’t call me a dinosaur. It isn’t fair to the dinosaurs. What did a dinosaur ever do to you?

Well, I never been to much school, you understand, but it seems to me that you’re assuming something you shouldn’t assume… that God sees the world like you do; one thing at a time, from...

It is a distinct pleasure to meet you, Steadholder.

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...

She was possessed?

Oh, I forgot to mention it: My brother is the kind of man whom women stalk. In cooperative packs.

I’m amazing and studly, but I have limits.

[Mouse is] with us. The dog is a handicap-assist animal.”The kid lifted his eyebrows.”My mouth is partially paralyzed,” I said. “It makes it hard for me to read. He’s here to help me with the...

I let out a battle cry. Sure, a lot of people might have mistaken it for a sudden yelp of unmanly fear, but trust me. It was a battle cry.

Pain is a byproduct of life. That’s the truth. Life sometimes sucks. That’s true for everyone. But if you don’t face the pain and the suck, you don’t ever get the other things either. Laughter....

The human mind is not a terribly logical or consistent place.

…The next time I opened my eyes, I was in the morgue.This, all by itself, is enough to really ruin your day.I was lying on the examining table, and Butters, complete with his surgical gown...

I didn’t want to believe that killing was deep inside of me. I didn’t want to think about the part of me that took a dark joy in gathering all the power it could and...